Dragonstorm
by CorrelationIsNotCausation
Summary: While Makarov schemes to find a woman for his socially-inept and rowdy grandson, an accident on a job entangles the fates of Wendy and Laxus and changes both of their lives forever. Long-game LaxusXWendy.
1. Get Fucked, Greta

Makarov noticed something was amiss nearly as soon as he and his grandson had moved in together. After the fight with Alvarez, the guildmaster had been left quite feeble and at times, incapable of taking care of himself. Laxus made it seem like he just didn't want to pay for his own place, but really, he wanted to help his grandfather.

Once they'd settled in together, he noticed there was a strange sense of melancholy in his grandson's eyes that came when he was relaxing and tended to linger, sometimes for days.

Although Makarov was frustrated with his body and annoyed with old age, he considered the time in their relationship to be quite wonderful, and was concerned that his grandson didn't feel as happy as he did. As a child, Laxus brought him so much joy to the point his little grandson's birth was a second lease on life for him. Now as an adult who had matured beyond most of his more fiendish behaviors, they were friends. After everything, he just wanted their lives to be filled with joy.

They drank in silence at night, sometimes out on the patio of their little house, which looked over the lake. Other times, they spoke; about the world of magic, the guild, their friends, and the future.

One warm summer night, over a couple of midnight beers, Makarov studied Laxus as he stared up at the stars.

"Are you sad about something, Laxus?"

Laxus' concentration broke as he looked down. "Sad?"

"Sometimes, you seem to be down about something. I'm worried."

His grandson sighed deeply and looked away. "I don't know. Sometimes I don't feel right. A few years ago, I was just looking for the next victory and the next drink. I've been feeling lately like there's not a big enough fight or a big enough drink."

Makarov asked, "What do you expect those things to do for you, Laxus? Bring you satisfaction?"

"It's not that. I understand now that getting shitfaced and fighting are fun things, but their benefit is short, and it wears off before my body recovers from the bruises and the hangovers that they cost me."

"I see."

"Do you? Because I don't."

The older man said, "You're growing, that's all. Your spirit has had enough liquor and enough violence. The human spirit craves a certain kind of love, something I feel like you've probably never experienced in a meaningful way."

"Are we finally having the talk? It's a little late."

Makarov replied, "You were immune to Larcade Dragneel's spell, so I don't think you've had a close companion."

"Tch! Damn it all. How did you know? You were literally dead when that was going on."

"Someone mentioned it."

Laxus sulked for a moment before saying, "I don't think I like being touched. Or touching. Or talking. Or being around other people. Some people prefer solitude."

"If you were meant to be alone, you'd be content. You aren't. You're lonely for an intimate companion, and there's no shame it that. It's not a weakness. It's part of the human experience. I've had a lot of things I've always wanted to say about this, but I didn't ever feel like it was the right time."

The fact that Laxus didn't immediately curse and walk off indicated to Makarov that his grandson was ready to have an honest conversation about falling in love.

"I'm a big boy now, Gramps. No reason to hold anything back. Life is too short right? Especially for an old geezer like you," he said.

Makarov said, "I wish you'd grown up in a good family, with parents who loved one another and you. The reason that I took you from them was so that I could love you. That was all I could ever offer, and it wasn't enough, but it was all that I had to give. I know if your childhood had been better that your path in life would have been easier. But you found your way and I'm really proud of you."

"We've always been better off by ourselves than when Ivan comes around."

"Have you been in contact with him?" Makarov asked.

"No. He can go to hell, Gramps."

With a nod of quiet agreement, the family patriarch tried to decide how to continue. He thought about maybe approaching the subject later, but Laxus seemed receptive and he was a rather moody creature by nature so it might be awhile before he was receptive.

So Makarov said, "Falling in love is the most magical thing a person can experience. It's something you feel everywhere at once, body, soul, and spirit. Imagine if instead of working for that next drink, or that next fight, you were working to come home to feel a woman's soft body next to yours? You're a complicated man who has had a hard time, your feelings are constantly tied in knots. But there's someone out there with the patience and kindness to untangle and untie you so you can be the person you're meant to be."

Laxus chuckled a bit, a rare sound, and gave Makarov an impish grin that was almost juvenile. "Are you saying I'm uptight because I need to get laid?"

"Well…yes. But there's really more to it than that. I think if you really put the effort into love, you'd experience such great happiness. There are wonders in life that you will never know if you move through the waters of life alone."

"Are these wonders that I can't experience armed with some hand lotion and some tissues?"

His grandfather's eyes became distant as he answered, "The feeling of butterflies as you kiss, the euphoria of a Saturday spent in bed, collecting seashells on the beach while waves splash your feet, hearing her giggle in your ear while you tickle her until she begs for mercy…making promises, making plans, making a baby…"

The last phrase brought Laxus' to a state of clear discomfort. "Yeah, that's not going to happen. I can't think of anything I dislike more than the idea of becoming a father."

"You wouldn't become _your_ father, you know. I know you feel that way, but it is—without any close second—life's greatest miracle. Kindling the fire of life with the person you care about is something incredible. You'd lay in bed for hours, talking with her about all your child might be someday. After a while, you'd get to put your hand on her growing belly and feel like life inside kick. And then, you'd get to watch a new life enter the world, watch your child take their first breaths in this world."

Laxus sipped his beer and said, "I suppose I'd be more moved if I didn't know you. You can speak of the wonder of being a father, but I just think about how you were this way, and what did you make? Ivan. And it doesn't seem like everyone experiences what you did. He obviously didn't."

"You would. You have a lot of love to give."

Laxus grumbled, "Whatever."

Makarov moved on, saying, "Anyway, I think you don't know how to form or build relationships. Don't worry, I've always got your back."

Bringing a palm to his face, he mumbled. "What did you do?"

"I set up a date for you! It's with a real hottie! You'll never guess who it is!"

"If it's a girl at the guild, I'll kill you while you sleep."

The nervous laugh he got in reply only confirmed that Makarov had meddled right in the pool of guild females, and that was the worst. The girls were a more tightly knit group and kept fewer secrets. They spoke about things that didn't need to be spoken about, so there was a mass of frivolous information that they kept. If Makarov disclosed that he was a socially awkward virgin, there was probably zero chance the whole group would eventually find out.

"She's a good girl. Looks like a real fertile myrtle, if you know what I mean," he teased.

"Do you not understand how disgusting you are? Just tell me who it is and I'll cancel tomorrow."

"I'm not telling. I told her she could tell everyone an embarrassing story I told her if you don't show up and behave."

Laxus stood and glared at him. "This conversation is irritating to me. Are you ready to go?"

"Inside? Yes, I'm getting tired."

His grandson placed his hands on the handles of the wheelchair, and instead of going into the house, he steered his grandfather across the small yard.

Makarov asked, "Are you trying to going to push me off the cliff and into the lake? That's not very nice."

"Do you think you don't deserve it?"

"I'm trying to help you lead a wonderful and fulfilling life, my dear sweet grandson. I am trying to help you and how do you thank me? By trying to throw me into a lake? Ungrateful!"

His grandson stopped. "Who is it?"

"I'm not telling, that would ruin the surprise, and give you a chance to prepare a list of awkward and very rude things to blurt out. It's better if you just act natural," he answered.

"Are you able to swim?" Laxus asked, "I figure, in a pinch, you can just make yourself huge to keep your head above water and sit in the lake like some monstrously huge wrinkled monster baby until someone who hasn't had to deal with you as long as I have comes to save you."

Makarov thumbed his nose. "Natsu will save me."

"Yes, but instead of trying to help you out of the water, he'll decide it makes more sense to just boil all the water in the lake off. That sounds fun, doesn't it?"

This caused Makarov to flinch. "Just give it a chance. You might be surprised. Relax, find an outfit without fur, animal print, spikes, and practice smiling. Pretend you're a real boy and not a creature currently occupying the body of one. And cut your hair for crying out loud."

Laxus decided to give up and just leave his grandfather there in the middle of the yard.

When he headed upstairs to his room, the part of his grandfather's talk that wasn't unrepentant trolling did linger in his mind. No matter how much he tried to deny it, he did sort of like the idea of having someone around. He'd considered it occasionally over the past year or so, but really had no idea how to make something like that happen.

After all, in the magic world, one achieved goals through hard physical training and violence. Applying these principles to romance was morally reprehensible and illegal in a civilized society.

It was a Natsu-esque dilemma: what does a dragonslayer do with a problem that can't be properly punched to death? The only difference between Natsu and himself and Gajeel was that Natsu freely admitted he intended to solve every problem with some combination of fire and fists.

Yet, Gajeel made it with a woman.

Laxus tried to think his way around that and quickly quit, because really, it was weird to try and figure out how another male gained access to a woman, or why that woman seemed so affectionate to him. He personally felt Gajeel had zero redeeming qualities outside of music ability and battle stats.

Although he outwardly said his efforts were to appease his old grandfather, he found a decent enough outfit, some dress shoes he'd only worn to a funeral once, and a tie. He tried the outfit on and shrugged at the 'okay enough' vibes it gave and then hung it carefully and moved on to shaving.

He preferred to perpetually have stubble on his face so he was nighttime shaver when he bothered. This annoyed Makarov, and Laxus believed this was probably the only reason that he developed this preference in the first place. It was one of probably hundreds of habits that he could not explain the source of outside of the fact they pissed off his grandfather, yet he continued them all.

After he had completed these tasks, he opened the window and looked out to his grandfather, who was slowly pushing himself back towards the door.

Leaning on the windowsill, he taunted him by shouting, "Just use magic, old geezer! Are you too drunk?"

"You ungrateful, wretched boy! Get down here and help me!"

"When I feel like it. I might leave you down there to work on your biceps and think about how terrible you are."

Makarov yelled back, "Forgive me for trying to keep you from dying alone! By the time I was your age, I'd been with so many women I lost count."

"That doesn't even make sense to me. You're short and kind of a loser."

"Twenty-five-year-old virgin calling someone a loser? That's rich. Don't you have a sock to romance?"

The neighbor's window opened, and a man stuck his head out. "Dammit, can you all just shut the hell up already? Drunk and yelling at each other all the time! You two are ruining our neighborhood."

Laxus said, "Why don't you care about ruining the neighborhood when your horse of a dog is shitting in everyone's yard? I know it was you and you never pick it up."

"As if!"

"It's true. I'm so glad I'm a dragonslayer and have the nose of a mythological beast so I can smell your dog's gigantic turds every morning at exactly 6:22 am. Stop being a bad neighbor, Paul," Laxus sarcastically replied.

Another window opened and an old lady yelled. "Enough, everyone shut up."

"Get fucked, Greta," Laxus answered.

Greta screamed, "Sounds like you're the one who needs that! I have twenty-six grandkids. You probably couldn't raise a potted plant if your life depended on it!"

Makarov waved her off. "Just turn your damn hearing aid off and go to bed!"

"What if there's a fire?"

Laxus answered, "Then you'll burn and I'll tell twenty-six children that you died because you're too nosy."

By this point, most of the people living in a relatively large radius were awake, but they'd learned there was no reason to intervene. Laxus and Makarov were simply going to get drunk and yell at each other several times a week and they had to accept it because there was no way to force them to move out.

Laxus shut the window and let his grandfather continuing the screaming match that consisted of Greta, Paul, and Makarov just yelling at each other to shut the hell up for ten minutes.

When he finally heard the back door open, he looked through one of his drawers for a leather pouch and headed down to meet him.

"Terrible grandson…"

"Hey. I need a haircut. No one does it right but you."

Makarov said, "After what you just did?! I'm going to help you, but only because you need a woman. No one is going to love you with all that hair on your neck. Maybe I should wait until I'm a little sober…"

"It's fine. You do it better when you're wasted. I want some personality in the front."

"Ah, I get it. No personality except in the hair," his grandfather answered as Laxus put him up on the kitchen counter and then sat down in a chair in front of him. "It's a good strategy. Women _love_ a man with thick hair. Going bald ruined my game. Also, having a kid. And that the kid was Ivan."

Makarov opened the leather pouch, took out a pair of scissors, and made rough, drunken cuts all over the place.

It wasn't that he was necessarily better than anyone else, because he wasn't. Laxus just didn't trust strangers to wield sharp objects next to his head. Dreyar hair being what it was, it didn't really matter; as soon as it was cut short it was going to spike up in whatever way it wanted.

"How did we get this drunk? I feel like we just went outside for one beer."

His grandfather answered, "We were wasted before that. I'm so happy we talked about our feelings. You're growing up so good now that we've gotten you past the 'kill everyone in town' phase."

"Whatever."

When Makarov finished, he tousled Laxus' hair. "All this thick hair…you're so handsome and yet have no other redeeming qualities. But don't worry. Grampa is going to help you find a lady."

"I really don't need or want your assistance."

"Don't care. You're getting it anyway, like that time you had an infected sore on your buttcheck because Erza stabbed you in the ass during the S-Class trial."

Laxus stood up and messed with his own hair a bit. "Thanks for bringing that up for the thousandth time. That's always the thing I want to talk about most."

"I can't help it. It makes me laugh and I know you deserved it. You called her a bitch."

"I did not. She had a dream that I did while we were camping and woke up, came to my tent, and stabbed me."

"After that you did."

"She stabbed me while I was asleep. I yelled bad words at someone for sticking a sword in my ass while I was unconscious."

Makarov said, "Well I don't remember it that way."

"You're just an old drunk. No one cares what you think."

"No one cares what you think, you drunk virgin. Now help me get to bed."

Laxus took his grandfather to bed and then headed back to his own room, where he slept until well into the morning. Mirajane had already showed up to take Makarov to the guild, so he had the house to himself. He cleaned up, folded laundry, made a grocery list, and then set out for the guild.

Wendy and Charle were walking down the street a ways down, and seemed to be lost. Wendy had a little slip of paper in her hand and was looking at address numbers as they made their way.

His first instinct was to evade, because he'd nearly very little direct contact with her.

But Wendy spotted him and started running and waving. "Good morning Laxus!"

And then, while running, tripped and would have fallen face-first on the concrete if Laxus didn't rush to her at lightning speed and grab her by the shirt. He put her back on her feet and stared at her.

He roughly gave her two pats on the head. "Hi."

Wendy beamed brightly and asked, "How are you today?"

"Uhhh…normal? Are you also normal?"

"Ummm, yes. Charle and I are definitely normal. We're looking for the cupcake shop. Everyone's been talking about it and I just thought maybe we could try one, but I can't find it."

Laxus said, "They have good coffee. I was going there to get some. You have to follow your nose. This street smells like dog shit and cake early in the morning. You would obviously follow the cake smell."

Wendy nodded. "Right. Cake smell. And not the dog smell. That just leads to our yard anyway."

"You have a dog?"

"Of course not. They're disgusting," he answered, "You can say 'dog shit' if you want. Do you not curse?"

"I'm still young. It's rude to say bad words."

"Doesn't stop Romeo. That boy's got a cannon and it's loaded with f-bombs. Cursing is a good way to blow off steam and remind people you're an adult."

Charle quickly interjected with, "Are you trying to be a bad influence?"

"I don't have conversations with animals, Least Useful Exceed."

She froze. "Excuse me, Least Useful Exceed?"

Wendy contemplated whether to enter this argument and decided against it. Charle could hold her own, and Laxus was naturally extremely antagonistic. Not only did he probably not care, he probably only spoke to Charle to piss her off.

Charle said, "How do you figure I'm less useful than…than Happy?"

"Don't talk shit about Happy, he's a treasure," Laxus answered, turning his trolling up to the max.

"You know what? You're not worth it," the exceed replied.

Wendy said, "I was talking with the other girls. We were thinking of going together to buy a house on this street. How is it?"

"It's fine."

"How are the neighbors?"

"They're okay, no major issues."

When they got to the cupcake shop, Wendy spent some time drooling on front of a display case over all the cupcakes. It was a fancy little shop, so the intricately-decorated treats were quite expensive, but Wendy became unnaturally fixated on one 'Mega-Cupcake,' which was more or less just a regular cake that was shaped like a cupcake.

"Five rainbow layers with four different fruit flavors and sprinkles, with buttercream and cherries," she said, reading the card.

Laxus, meanwhile, got his coffee and sat down by himself not far from Wendy, amazed at her strange preoccupation with the Mega-Cupcake.

Greta came in and got a coffee, made her way to the table where Laxus was sitting and stared him down like an enemy about to hammer him into the ground.

It was so intense that Wendy turned. "I feel anger. It's so intense."

And then, Greta took her cane and swung it at Laxus like a bat, hitting him squarely in the side of the head.

Of course, he could have dodged it, but he chose not to. The metal cane made a hollow popping sound, and he stared at her as if equally bored and annoyed.

Wendy gasped and covered her mouth. "That old woman assaulted Laxus!"

Greta said, "Sounded hollow. Not surprising that head has nothing in it."

"Go sit down before you break a hip or something. I'm busy."

She moved on to sit at her own table, and Laxus finished his coffee only to find Wendy was still obsessing over the Mega-Cupcake.

Laxus loomed over her. "Are you going to eat that whole thing?"

"Porlyusica said I might grow if I increase my calorie intake."

"It worked for Droy," he replied.

Wendy put her hands on the glass. "It's really more than I can afford. I could, but then I'd have less money left for things that are more important."

The lightning wizard said, "That sounds like a real quandary. I'll buy you the Mega-Cupcake on one condition."

"What's that?"

Laxus whispered in her ear to keep Charle from hearing.

Wendy frantically answered, "I can't! I won't! That's not right!"

"You saw what happened. You know the difference between enemies and friends, don't you? Subjecting someone who hurts a friend to momentary discomfort in order to gain something you want is what wizarding is all about."

Charle asked, "What did he ask you to do?"

Wendy covered her mouth. "I can't…it's too horrible!"

"Dirty words are still only words," Laxus added.

The girl looked at the Mega-Cupcake, then at Laxus, and then wordlessly made her way to the old woman.

Wendy's words wouldn't come out at first, and then, because she struggled as much as she did, the old woman started talking to her.

"Such a cute young girl shouldn't hang around with a man like that. He's no good. He'll be a bad influence. I know you're one of those wizards, but you seem like such a cute and innocent girl," she chided.

Now that she'd insulted Laxus, and hit him with her cane, Wendy was able to take a deep breath and shout the words trapped in her throat as she stood there with clenched fists and eyes.

"Get fucked, Greta!" she cried out.

It was so loud everyone else in the busy shop stopped everything they were doing, and silence just hung on the air for several seconds. Charle's mouth gaped open in shock and dismay that it was even possible for Wendy to utter such a thing.

And then, Laxus laughed. Really, laughed, and laughed hard. It was the first time Wendy had ever seen him do this and she actually found it both evil and creepy.

When he finished laughing, which took nearly a minute, he turned to the employee behind the counter and said, "I'll take the Mega-Cupcake please."

Charle said, "You are the most terrible person in this world. Why is that woman even mad?"

"I don't even know," the lightning wizard said as he gave her another awkward pat on the head and they left the shop to head toward the guild. "Wendy, you should roll with the Thunder Legion sometime, I think it would be good for you."

Wendy pointed to herself. "Really, me?"

Charle said, "Absolutely not, especially not after what just happened."

Laxus answered, "Happy never gives Natsu attitude about jobs. Be. More. Like. Happy."

The girl sensed the rage radiating off of Charle and asked, "Laxus, do you enjoy being surrounded by people that are angry at you?"

"Is that not normal?"

"Of course it's not."

He said, "Come on our next job. I have something stupid and pointlessly idiotic to do tonight, but we're leaving in the morning. I have something I'd like to tell you away from the guild, big dragon to little dragon. I think it may help you."

-Reviews Welcome-

Note - as noted in the description, this is long game Laxus/Wendy, nothing weird or gross.


	2. A Distraction and a Disaster

If there were a hundred things Laxus did to annoy his grandfather, there were a hundred things he did to humor the old man. There really wasn't anyone who loved him more than Makarov or had invested more patience or effort into his life. Sometimes Laxus didn't understand why he did any of it, but the old man's love was always without comprehension.

Even then, Makarov still cared about Ivan and seemed to believe he was somehow still redeemable.

Honestly, there wasn't a lot he wouldn't do for his grandfather. If going out on this date with whomever was going to make Makarov happy, he'd do it.

When he came downstairs, Gildarts was at their house, talking quietly with his grandfather in the living room.

The red-headed ace of Fairy Tail looked up at him and asked, "You're wearing a tie. Who died?"

"Laxus is going on a date. Doesn't he look dashing?"

"Ah, I guess so. He's charming until he opens his mouth," Gildarts chuckled.

Laxus shrugged. "I feel like the structural integrity of your body makes laughing a hazard. So keep doing it, you might die."

"You're never going to get laid with that attitude."

"I'm leaving. I'm going to eat. Then I'm going to come home."

He walked to the restaurant, hands in his pockets and slightly forlorn that while he was lonely, he didn't want to cooperate with this process. If the funk he was in was caused by a lack of woman in his life, it wasn't just that he was awkward. Laxus legitimately hadn't ever felt drawn enough to one woman in his entire life, leading to an extended period where he doubted his sexuality.

The restaurant looked expensive and when he arrived, he gave them his name and was taken to a dimly lit corner where Mirajane was waiting in a little blue dress and heels, her hair curled. On a terrible day, she was still one of the most beautiful women to ever grace the pages of Sorcerer's Weekly, so when she was intentionally dressed up, she was unquestionably beautiful.

"Laxus?"

"Mirajane."

She smiled and said, "You look nice."

"You're hotter than the sun, as always. You want wine?"

"Sure, thank you."

They didn't say much for a while, but both were equally sure this was a well-meant but futile gesture.

Laxus said, "You can just tell the old man you're with Freed. Everyone is going to find out eventually."

"It's nice to have secrets sometimes. Once the guild finds out, we'll be bombarded with what everyone thinks. Until that happens, we're free to just be ourselves. You know how it is. There's a critical lack of privacy and an abundance of gossip and opinions."

"So I'm buying an expensive dinner for Freed's girl? I can live with it."

Mirajane said, "It's all for Master's sake. And for good food. I eat a lot, you know."

"Of course I know."

This was the anomaly, Laxus Dreyar: hell bent on causing chaos in some moments and perfectly at ease in others.

"Erza was looking for you earlier."

"I knew she would be."

Mirajane sipped her wine and said, "I heard you were being a bad influence, coercing Wendy into cursing at an old woman. She's going to punish you."

Laxus feigned confusion. "What was it she said, 'queen slut bag?' Oh, that was how Erza referred to you at that age, or did I forget?"

She giggled. "Do you ever miss those days? There was a time when we were growing up but before Lisanna disappeared where the sky seemed so clear. We didn't know how hard the future was going to be. We were just a bunch of kids, and we didn't know the hell we'd have to go through, over and over."

"No. That was the more difficult time for me. Don't you ever miss jobs?"

"Not at all. A lot of people think Lisanna's death made me stop being a wizard, but what it really did was show me my own heart and what mattered to me. I love being at home in the guild and doing what I can to help others. The trauma of how I thought she died just made me afraid of takeover magic. Same with Elfman."

"I was happy to see her alive on Tenrou. I screwed up in the fight with Hades because I picked up the scent of her blood on the air and it startled me."

"That's actually sweet."

"I almost died, Mira."

Mirajane just smiled. "You're actually quite sweet, you know. I think Master is right about you needing a special someone. I've been trying to think of someone who might work for you. Lucy might get along well enough. She seems excitable and I think you'd enjoy making her angry all the time."

"She's got a thing with Natsu, right? I went to her apartment once with a note from the old man and it smelled like he lives and sleeps there with her."

"I think it's platonic sleeping together? I think Lucy and Natsu have great chemistry as friends and teammates, but she needs someone with other common interests. She loves books and culture and that's just not Natsu. But I'm biased. You know I'm holding out for Lisanna and Natsu."

Laxus said, "It seems…triangular. Maybe I need someone calmer. Lucy's got a mean kick on her. Lisanna is cute."

"Yeah, for Natsu. Make a move and I will end you."

"I'm joking. I don't really think of anyone like that. I don't know that I'll ever love a person more than I love magic. That makes me more of a Gildarts than a Makarov, if you catch my drift. Not everyone is fit for it. If that's true, I'd rather not go to all the trouble of screwing up someone else's life."

A decade before, they were wild and young, and never could have had a peaceful discussion. Time had smoothed all things, and Mirajane was one of the few people he considered a close friend. He trusted her and trusted that she always had the guild and its wizards' best interest at heart.

"You don't mind helping Gramps while I'm gone?"

"No, I like spending time with him. We don't get trashed and yell at the neighbors."

Laxus said, "Just so it's not too easy for him, I just want you to know Gramps said you looked like a 'fertile myrtle,' whatever the hell that is."

Her face darkened. "Did he?"

"He did."

Laxus asked for the check, and after it arrived, left bills on the table to cover cost and stood when she did. "You need me to walk you home?"

"I'll be fine. I've heard a demon walks these streets at night."

"Take care and take care of Freed. He seems happy. The old geezer will be happy for you when you tell him."

He headed home, where Gildarts and Makarov were still drinking.

Kicking off his shoes, he made his way into the living room and scowled at both. "You'd both be in better shape if you didn't get shitfaced every single night. Give it a rest already."

Gildarts laughed, "You want to rumble, sparky?"

"Going to pass on guaranteed obliteration by a one-legged drunk and go to bed early."

"Forget that, how was your hot date?"

Laxus turned. "No good. I'm not into her. Not my type. I think I know what to do now."

He said this to keep his grandfather out of his business but was still essentially in the same place he'd been before the talk. Feeling loneliness due to lack of intimate relationship didn't mean it was necessarily time for him to go out and find one.

"You're leaving on your job tomorrow?"

He nodded and paused on the steps. "Wendy is going with us. I assume that means her exceed will as well. We're leaving at seven. Mira will come by at around eight, probably to kick your ass and then drag you to work."

-###-

The job was up north, in the mountains.

The two days of travel to get there were pleasant if one wasn't a dragonslayer, then fate shifted gears and conditions became favorable for the dragon-blooded wizards once they arrived at the base of the mountain.

"This is unrelated, but that mountain," Freed said, pointing to the neighboring mountain, "Is Mt. Zonia, where Gildarts crossed paths with Acnologia. This area is said to draw magical creatures to it. This is an S-Class mission not because our job is hard, but because this area tends to be an epicenter of violence among magical creatures. Be careful and keep watch."

Evergreen asked, "Is Wendy good to move like we usually do?"

"She's qualified to be here, with or without her exceed," Freed answered.

Bixlow rose up on his dolls. "What's the first rule of the Thunder Legion, babies?"

"Air superiority!" his dolls chanted in unison.

Laxus nodded. "Our team maintains tactical superiority by using the sky as our playground. Most wizards are bound to the earth, and if they can't fly, they can't do it well. We're expert who have trained for countless hours. You seem like the most valuable asset for us, since you basically own the sky."

"I need Charle to stay in the air," she timidly said.

"I'm sure you don't. You're the sky dragon slayer. The sky is yours. You need to have confidence in how you use it. Every dragonslayer can change some of the properties of the element they use."

They flew up the side of the mountain rather than climbing it, which saved hours and a lot of energy. Well, for everyone except Wendy, who went a little slower as she pushed herself up with bursts of air. The motion was jagged and inconsistent, like jumping in air, and she'd start to fall if she didn't time them well.

"Just let me take you. This is how it's always been, Wendy," Charle said as she hovered next to Wendy's ear.

Wendy said, "I want to get better. That's why I came."

The winds that whipped around the mountains were powerful and the higher she climbed, the thinner the air was and the colder it became. This only made the task harder and at some point about halfway down, she had an epiphany.

If the air becoming thinner made it harder to climb, if she used her magic to make it thicker, it would be easier. And more importantly, if she created pressure under her to offset the density of her body versus the air under it, she would hover when she wasn't climbing.

Manipulating the qualities of the air in addition to using it as a force against her mass would allow her to remain in the air without using massive amounts of magic energy.

Wendy levelled off and hovered in the air, enveloped in an air bubble roughly the shape of her body, she felt at rest. The amount of magic required to maintain this spell was less than the amount she gained by the sky magic she reabsorbed while breathing, so in theory, it was something she could maintain indefinitely while conscious.

The dragonslayer dragged her fingers through the air and turned, grabbing the current as it whipped by and pulling it around her, and another with her other hand. She twisted them as she turned her body, once, twice, and then furiously.

While waiting for her at the top the rest of the Thunder Legion watched her difficult progress up. A mountain was both the best and worst place to test flight skills, but even if Charle hadn't been there, the rest of the Thunder Legion knew Laxus could move a lot faster than a human could fall if something went wrong.

Bixlow reached out to snatch his dolls as they were suddenly jerked outward.

"Oh noes! A tornado!" they chanted.

Wendy landed on the flat top of the mountain, out of breath.

The mountain had an ancient temple that had subfloors and caves that went deep underground. It was an area off-limit to civilians because the ruins were dangerous. There was dense fog at the top, but they could make out the details of the old columns as they walked across worn old stone bricks with runes.

"The runes are sealing runes. The magic has long expired. This is old magic that went out of popular use before the formation of the Midian Empire during the Hericlean Era," Freed said.

Evergreen replied, "Pre-Zeref then."

"By centuries at least."

The Thunder Legion went ahead, and Wendy hung back so she could quietly whisper, "Charle."

"What is it?"

"I still need you. I'll always need you, okay?"

"I'm here for you, Wendy. No matter what. We made that promise, remember?"

Wendy nodded.

Their job seemed simple enough; priests that visited the site twice a year reported rumbling from inside the mountain, which meant some creature had likely taken up residence in the subterranean part of the temple.

Laxus stared down at the ground. "I don't sense anything. No scents, no signs anything is alive. It's possible the sounds they heard were the underground structures collapsing, right?"

"These old Hericlean temples are so indestructible that it's hard to get rid of them when you want to. There's probably magic and physical reinforcement all over the place. Like that temple we found in the desert a few years ago," Freed said.

Evergreen pulled her coat tighter around herself. "Wasn't that place a prison for some monster?"

Laxus said, "We'll go in the proper way, but any sign the place isn't sturdy and we're going to come in from the side."

The mountain suddenly started to shake, and a growling sound erupted from it.

Wendy said, "That's not an animal. The vibration was strange. Like something in the mountain is shaking and it's making the mountain shake. It would have been different if it was just something caving in, right?"

"You can hear the tiny modulations in sounds also?" Laxus asked.

She nodded. "I also notice this mountain is colder than any of the ones around it. The snow cap is over two hundred feet lower even though it faces the warmest winds and is on the outside of the ridge. The air isn't cold…it's the mountain. That sound, it kind of reminded me of Gray's ice breaking, just bigger."

It hit Bixlow first, which was actually a rarity. "Hey, you know that spell Gray knows? The one where you can seal a creature in ice?"

Freed gasped. "That's right. That's a very old spell. The lost version is from the same era. Most of these temples _were_ designed to be prisons. If the most powerful wizard in the whole world cast Lost Iced Shell on an enemy, it would wittle the enemy's life force down until the caster's lifeforce finally expired. The exchange would be incredible—Iced Shell amplifies the magic of the caster tens of thousands of times, but acts slowly, storing that energy as ice. If you put something inside that was strong enough to survive that, it would eventually break free."

The ground rumbled again, and a huge crack appeared in the stones they were standing on.

A missing piece of a puzzle they hadn't bothered to put together fell into place as a distinct, unmistakable scent filled the air.

Acnologia ran into Gildarts in this area because he'd been looking something, and Acnologia only cared about one thing.

The entire top of the mountain suddenly exploded from within, sending wizards flying in every direction as a dragon clawed its way out.

It was transparent, and almost looked like it was made from crystal, but there was an overwhelming wave of cold that left even the dragonslayers shivering as they struggled to gain their bearings and change course mid-air.

"An ice dragon!" Wendy said, gasping, "This can't be real."

The dragon stopped to scrape the remains of the iced shell off one of its legs and roared so loud the entire mountain range shook violently.

Acnologia had missed this dragon during his purge because it was sealed away and its magic was undetectable.

Charle grabbed Wendy mid-air and pulled her to where the Thunder Legion was floating at the side of the mountain.

The dragon seemed a little disoriented, which gave them a moment to consider their path.

"The dragon has probably been weakened by the ice shell," Freed said.

Laxus shook his head. "It's an ice dragon. Iced shell wouldn't have forced him into dormancy. He used it to hide from Acnologia, and now that Acnologia is dead, it decided to come out."

"Do we fight?" Wendy asked.

He said, "I want everyone else to retreat. Worst case scenario, your magic won't work anyway. Wendy. We're going to go down there and figure out if this is an enemy or friend. Follow my lead and don't show even a hint of weakness. If things go poorly, jump and figure out what to do after that."

Charle grabbed her shirt. "I'm going."

"It will make her look weak."

Wendy said, "I'm ready."

Her heart was pounding so hard he could hear it as they waited for the others to gain some distance.

"Are you afraid?" he asked.

"Aren't you?"

"I'm terrified. Just breathe."

Wendy entered dragon force, stilled her breathing, and followed him to where he stopped above the dragon's head.

In close proximity, the dragon took note of them, staring at first before speaking in frosted breath. "Dragonslayers…"

Laxus said, "We are dragonslayers who put Acnologia in his grave."

The ice dragon replied, "Acnologia was done in by the dragonslayers and not Zeref?"

"Our guild destroyed both."

The dragon replied, "That's unfortunate for your guild, although I never planned on facing Grandine and Fulguros again. Of Igneel's forces, they were among the strongest. Devouring their power will give me the power I need."

Laxus knew Grandine was Wendy's matron dragon, but it was the first time he'd ever heard the other name.

When the dragon flashed its teeth and snapped in the air so fast it very nearly bit Wendy in half.

Wendy was snatched out of the way just in time by Charle, who started to fly when the dragon let out a roar that send a blast of subzero hair filled with razorsharp ice spikes at her.

One went through her side, and suddenly, she was falling. There was blood in the air that wasn't hers and she turned in the air and used everything she knew how to do, but the attack hadn't really been aimed at her, but the ice dragon hadn't aimed the attack at her.

By the time she took hold of Charle, it was too late.

She was falling toward the ground, and Charle was gone and she wasn't going to come back.

The dragon chased her, but was stopped when it was struck by a huge burst of lightning magic and Laxus attacked it with enough force a patch of its ice scales shattered and went flying everywhere.

It pulled back because its huge body was hurtling toward the ground, and Laxus kept going, grabbing Wendy and bringing her down to a narrow pass and into a cave he'd noticed when they were getting ready to ascend the mountain.

Wendy was stopped holding Charle, as she had a huge ice spike through the middle of her chest. All she could think about was that Charle wasn't supposed to be there. The exceed had come back for her, and if she hadn't, Wendy would be the one who was gone.

Laxus was shouting her name, but it sounded like dull background noise. Even though he was saying something to her and it was probably important, she couldn't hear him. When she looked down, there was a spike sticking out of her too, all the way through her side.

She felt so cold.

Then she only felt pain as he gripped the ice spike and pulled it out. As loud as she could scream, it wasn't enough, and that didn't even compare to how it felt when used lightning to stop the bleeding, burning a hole through her to cauterize the path the spike had traveled.

It was Laxus fault that she was in this position, but this job was supposed to be something normal. Maybe there was an ogre or some low-class demon hanging out in the temple, that's always how it went.

The dragon was set on eating them to consume their dragon magic, and while the ice dragon was nowhere near as powerful as Acnologia, he was more powerful than it needed to be to kill them without any problem and he was much faster than Acnologia.

When Wendy's ears stopped ringing, Laxus was sitting there next to her.

The look on his face was indescribably grim.

"Did we do wrong, talking to it?" she finally whispered.

Laxus leaned his head back, holding his hand over a bleeding gash on his arm. "It didn't change anything. It was going to eat us anyway. If we hadn't said anything to it and tried to run from the first moment, we'd probably be in exactly this position, just a little farther away."

"It's my fault, I froze, and Charle…"

"It's not your fault. Charle was a proud member of Fairy Tail, just like you. She died in battle because she chose to fight."

Wendy put her hand on her side. "It doesn't hurt at all."

Laxus said, "I'm sorry for bringing you here."

"Where's are the others?"

"I trained my team well. They know not to throw their lives away. Freed will do the right thing."

Wendy asked, "Can you move fast enough to get away from it?

"No. Even if I tried, if he used his roar, he'd cut my body to pieces. I wouldn't leave anyway."

"Can you fight?"

"Extreme cold has a dampening effect on lightning, so I'm not that effective."

After considering all this, she numbly said, "We're going to die here?"

"I think so. That spike lacerated your liver, so I only stopped you from bleeding out. I can't stop you from bleeding in. It's a moral wound, Wendy," he said.

Laxus felt a weight on his chest he couldn't even internally sort out when he considered that Wendy was going to die because of decisions he made. She was young, and she was supposed to have a big, bright future. Instead, she was either going to be eaten by a monster or bleed to death.

The lightning wizard said, "I'm sorry."

Wendy replied, "Can we keep it from using our powers?"

"We probably could but it wouldn't be pretty. I could overload my lacrima and that would destroy our bodies."

"I'm scared," she whispered.

Laxus held out a hand but noticed that he had a patch of scales on his palm where he'd been cut by the sharp scales of the dragon. "Have you ever healed someone with your blood? I had a huge gash on my hand and now I don't. My hand actually feels strangely stronger than it usually does?"

"Nothing like that's ever happened before."

He pointed to her abdomen. "You have a little patch of scales too."

Laxus pulled a utility knife from his boot and cut his other palm open, and then let the blood drip on her wound.

While they watched, the area healed up and scaled over.

It was like pure life, every drop healing and invigorating Wendy. There was an argument to be made that maybe her blood contained healing properties because she was a healer, but zero reason to think Laxus' would have the same ability.

Dragonslayer brawls were incredibly bloody by their very nature and there had been mixing of blood—torn knuckles on busted eyes and the like. This interaction was extremely powerful and completely undocumented.

In mere minutes, while the dragon waited for its victims to emerge, Wendy's mortal wound became nothing at all except patches of scales that crackled with lightning. Even stranger, helping Wendy's energy seemed to increase Laxus' magic power.

Wendy said, "This doesn't make any sense."

"Nothing ever does. I've bled on other people before. They usually just complain. I feel very in tune with the air right now."

The younger dragonslayer said, "I can feel the lightning in the clouds."

Laxus grabbed her hand. "This seems to be an interaction derived from the dragons whose magic we use. They were able to heal one another, share powers, and increase the abilities of the other. Exploiting this is going to be our best bet for surviving." He made a cut on her palm. "Let's fight."

"Fight?"

"The dragon's body is brittle and cold, and his attacks weaken mine. You could use powerful jets of air to keep him from hitting us with enough power? Probably even keep the cold streams from hurting my attacks and force him to crash into mountains. Speed and cold and his spiked breath attack are what he's got, but we're dragonslayers."

Laxus was a far more powerful and advanced wizard, so his magic container held more than hers did, and since he needed her to do most of the work, she felt his magic rush into her body when their bleeding palms met.

Wendy didn't really know what was going on, but she was sure that what they were doing was probably bad and wrong and broke a lot of rules that didn't know about. She could begin to guess why two dragons would have these abilities with one another, and suspected Laxus wasn't without suspicion either.

It was what they had to survive.

Laxus felt a strange sensation of fullness, and then, as Wendy's magic transferred to him, the lacrima in his body shattered and the lightning dragon magic, unbound, flooded his body in an insane frenzy that caused his first, true dragon force. In some chain reaction, Wendy was forced into the same state, but high on all Laxus' power and the hidden magic they'd tapped, she felt like she was literally the queen of the sky.

Whatever had happened, they would sort it out later. They erupted from the cave, and when the dragon came at them, Wendy threw it into an adjacent mountain so hard it caused a mudslide.

She could see the air streams, the way it moved and how strong it was, what made it and how dense it was. More importantly she felt like she had the power to command it in whatever way she wanted.

Laxus slammed into the dragon with a massive attack when it hit the mountain, and when it tried to use its breath attack, another gust of wind sent the spikes to the ground and safely out of the way.

When it went for her, Laxus pounded it, concentrating on an area of its neck where he was cracking the scales off. Their efforts in the cave left him with strange spatial awareness not only of Wendy but of her magic and how she was using it to the point he almost felt like he realized he somehow knew what she was about to do before she did it.

It was terrifying, overpowering, and the most intense rush either had ever experienced as a wizard.

Wendy created her second-ever tornado and swept the dragon up in it only to change its direction and hurl it into the ground with so much force one of its ice-armored wings snapped in half.

Once it was stuck on the ground, Laxus absolutely pummeled it nearly to death with lightning attack after lightning attack after lightning attack, relying on Wendy to keep him safe from enemy attack. Sometimes she did this by redirecting the enemy's attack, and sometimes she did it by pushing him out of the way with her magic.

When it was lingering near death, Laxus came to her side and held up his hand. Wendy took it with a shaking hand, knowing there was going to be that strange synergistic reaction.

"Ultimate Dragon Technique…" he started.

"Hellstorm," Wendy finished.

A sky magic vortex of lightning picked up and absolutely decimated the dragon, which exploded into what seemed to be powdered ice.

They fell to the ground together, as a light blue stone fell to the ground and rolled down a bare, muddy hill toward them.

As Wendy lay on her back, she played back the battle and realized the dragon had been talking to them throughout the battle and she just hadn't listened. The weird magic was deafening and strange, far more powerful than anything she'd known. When the harsh reality of what happened before that came to her, tears streamed down her face.

After resting for a few minutes, he stood up, picked up the ice dragon lacrima, and peered at it.

He'd always wondered how they were made and why there was such a finite number of them in the world, but this wasn't the answer he'd hoped for.

It was all his fault, everything that happened. He'd snatched the job ahead of recent S-Class inductee Levy, and ironically, if Team Shadowgear had taken it, they might have all been okay. Laxus was sure the dragon hastened his escape from the iced shell because there was dragon magic for him to consume. Even if the dragon had broken out at the same moment, it had no interest in ordinary humans and probably just would have ignored them.

Taking the job was his decision, and bringing Wendy was also his decision.

If Charle hadn't grabbed her, the dragon would have bitten her in half and her life would have ended in terror and gore.

When Wendy ran out of tears, she sat up and found Laxus leaning against a rock.

Tears were streaming down his face as he stood there with crossed arms.

"You're that sad about Charle?"

"It's not that. I feel like shit, and I'm sorry all this happened. I think your feelings are spilling over into me and I don't seem to be able to end whatever we started. I don't understand what happened at all."

He wiped his face with the sleeve of his coat.

Wendy stood from the ground and wiped her face with her hands, following him in trying to put herself back together. Her mind was reeling as she sorted through distant memories from her childhood for hints about what they'd discovered.

She stared at her hands, "I'm not sure either. I've never heard anything about anything like this. I felt so powerful…but we exchanged blood. That's taboo."

"Blood rituals are forbidden because they're incredibly powerful and have extreme consequences. We did what we had to do, but there's going to be a price for his," he said, holding up his scaled hand.

Wendy covered her mouth. "Will we be cursed, like Mavis?!"

"It wasn't that kind of bad. I'm going to assume we're safe from something like that. Let's keep this a secret for now. Don't tell anyone, not even the old man. We'll say we fought and won and not mention the rest. No one needs to know about this, and especially not about the lacrima. There's a lot of dangerous information here that could put the guild at risk. Secrets like this are powerful, and every time you tell someone else, they become less valuable and more dangerous."

Wendy was inclined to go along with this, both because she was devastated and because she was afraid to tell anyone she'd taken part in a forbidden magic spell. And honestly, she just didn't feel like talking about it at all—not about how it felt to hold Charle's body, or the fear from being impaled, or the emotions that came with acknowledging inescapable death.

They had escaped, and if they did something wrong in the process, did it even matter?

When the others joined them, Wendy fell straight back to pieces when she tried to saw Charle had died, and Laxus vanished while the Thunder Legion recovered her body and wrapped her in a blanket. When she calmed down again, he returned, and said almost nothing about the battle itself outside of its final outcome. They'd won, and there was a casualty.

-###-

Back home, shock, grieving, and a funeral.

It came with the realization that it was possible other dragons had survived by hiding themselves by magical means and might reenter the post-Acnologia world, which made the presence of dragonslayers more important than ever.

Of the dragon's slaying itself, there was basically no information.

Wendy was talkative, and tended to explain things in detail, but Laxus was succinct, and never said one more word than was necessary when it came to important matters.

At home, after things started to settle down, Laxus joined his grandfather for their first late night drink in a while.

Makarov asked, "Are you and Wendy purposefully withholding information about the fight up north?"

"Yes. I told her not to discuss what happened with anyone. I need you to trust us and leave it alone."

"Very well. I'll defer to your judgement, with the condition that you're responsible for making sure Wendy is okay in the wake of everything that happened. You dragged that girl through hell. I know it wasn't your intention. It happened. She lost the best friend she had in the world."

Laxus nodded. "I feel like shit."

Makarov didn't doubt this, but Laxus' processing of the events was not congruent with the normal way he handled things. He'd been exceptionally moody, quiet, and grieved like the loss of the exceed was mor personal to him than it actually was. There was a distinct difference between the sorrows of responsibility and those of loss and he seemed to be experiencing the latter in a disproportionate way.

Laxus knew his grandfather knew something was wrong, but he was trying very hard to hide the fact that even two weeks after the fight on the mountain, Wendy's feelings infected him like a disease.

At the same time, Wendy seemed exceptionally stalwart as she faced the tragedy.

Makarov saw a glint in the moonlight and saw his grandson was wearing a ring on the middle finger of his left hand. "An enchantment?"

"This? I've decided to be a more spiritual person, that's all."

The old man asked, "Would I be angry if I knew the secret you're keeping?"

"You would be furious. Probably bewildered. Magic is strange."

"Maybe you should schedule a night out with someone, get your mind off everything."

Laxus shook his head. "I'm happy on my own. I'm not interested in anything like that right now."

They drank, and drank, and then drank some more.

The dragonslayer went in for another beer, and then after slumping back down, popped the top off. "This doesn't seem to be doing much for me."

And then…

"Oops." The dragonslayer stared at his beer, and said, "I need to go check something. I'll be back."

Laxus disappeared in a streak of lightning but ended up only getting as far as the tree outside the girl's dormitory. Violating the laws of magic was a lesser offense than one of the guild males stepping foot inside, and there was no escaping Erza, but Erza was out on a job.

So he decided to break into the dorm, and opened the third-floor window where Wendy's room was and perched on the windowsill, a dragonslayer technique known as 'the Natsu.'

Wendy was face-down on the bed.

She started to get up but tripped and fell flat on her face. "I'm sick…something is wrong. I feel sick to my stomach, and I'm so dizzy. Help…"

Laxus didn't move from his perch on the windowsill. "You're drunk."

"I've never even had a drink."

"I've been trying to get drunk for hours."

Wendy broke down into tears, because she and Laxus were very irritated and tired of their apparently permanent connection. They were very different people at very different places in life and it was impossible to stop the emotional bleed-over. In most cases, the line was so blurred she wasn't sure what was coming from her own mind and what she was soaking up from him.

The stood up, wobbled over to the bed, and sat down.

"Are you just going to sit there on the windowsill?"

Laxus said, "Do you as a fifteen-year-old girl want a grown man in your bedroom where you sleep?"

"It's just you."

"The answer should be no. Sheesh. Don't be naïve. The world is filled with creeps. I am not one."

Wendy said, "Anyway, about what happened, it's permanent, I'm sure of it."

He answered, "Whatever this is, it's rooted in dragon magic, so human magic is going to do fuck-all for us. If we can break the link, I don't think it's going to be easy. I still don't have any understanding at all what magical mechanism enabled any of that to happen."

With a nod, Wendy said, "I know what happened. I figured it out, but I didn't want to say anything in case it was just temporary. It was what the ice dragon said, when he named Fulguros.

"When I was little, I used to fear thunderstorms, and I would snuggle up to Grandine. She told me she liked thunder, it reminded me of her mate who had passed away a long time before. His name was Fulguros. He must have been killed by a dragonslayer, and his magic eventually made its way to you. Grandine's magic is in me.

"Dragons were powerful and magical creatures. We tapped into the power they shared together. If you think about it, it's beautiful and sad. Hundreds of years ago, two creatures loved each so much that the power of their connection was imprinted into their very magical essence. They both died and it lived on, hidden in us. It reawakened when our lifeblood came into contact."

From an outsider's perspective, that was quite a tale, and Laxus' more grim speculation about the matter led him to believe something like this was probably true before Wendy confirmed it.

Laxus thought for a long while, and said, "If that's true, it's probably unlikely we'll ever be able to break the link unless one of us gives up their magic or dies."

"Grandine's magic is all I have left of her. That's not something I would ever do. It wouldn't make sense for you to give up your magic either. The guild would suffer."

He answered, "If we both keep our magic, I think I'll go back to Blue Pegasus for a while."

"Why?"

"Back to the part where I am grown and you are not, this is problematic."

Wendy asked, "Why does that even matter?"

"To be incredibly blunt, the idea of a fifteen-year-old girl knowing when I'm horny makes me want to crawl out of my own skin and take an acid bath. I got this enchantment to stop that from happening, but I have a more mature mindset and a much more forceful personality. Even if I avoid the most heinous problems, you're still going to be under my influence."

She said, "You'll be under mine too, right?"

"Do you think those are equal forces?"

Wendy seemed more dismissive of this concern. "I think I can probably avoid turning into you. I don't even understand how _you_ turned into you."

"See? You're usually too timid to say anything rude."

"Standing up for myself doesn't make me more like you, it makes me more like me."

Laxus decided maybe she was right; she'd lost her best friend. Besides, she was at the crossroads that led to adulthood and that came with needing to be more confident and assertive.

The situation they were in felt like such a muddled mess, and it was costly.

"Maybe we just keep our distance then and do the best we can," he said.

The younger dragonslayer replied, "Why don't we take advantage of it?"

"You mean keep exploiting forbidden magic to overpower enemies? I don't really give a shit about rules, and if we're just going to ignore all this weirdness because we're screwed and can't get out of it, I suppose it's a winning idea. The consequences aren't going to change for us either way."

Wendy said, "We might need that power to help our friends. We've already paid the price for it, right?"

The lightning wizard actually felt when it came to their perilous magic entanglement, Wendy had a deeper understanding of how it worked and wasn't as fearful and anxious about it as he was. His instinct was to avoid her like the plague, but hers was to try embrace the power.

The far-reaching consequences of their mind-link meant Laxus became Wendy's weak point and vice versa. This was more a problem for Wendy than it was for Laxus, as the lightning wizard didn't necessarily believe Wendy had a long list of enemies.

Laxus did, and Wendy's instinct to trust combined with her young age meant if his enemies ever found out, they'd target her. She was strong, but it would be easier to overcome her than him.

"We still need to keep this a secret?"

"Wendy, you absolutely cannot tell anyone you have a deep mental connection with a grown man. No one will understand, everyone will gossip, and someone will probably try to stone me to death. Let the record show, I'm not a creep."

Wendy said, "You said that already. I'll explain it completely. You got me drunk and came to my room and told me not to tell anyone."

He leaned forward and stared intensely at her. "Gildarts would beat me into a paste. Don't fuck with me, Wendy. I'll eat nothing but sour plums for a week."

They'd discovered on their third day back he loved sour plums and the sheer potency of their taste caused Wendy to experience it too. Laxus actually loved him, but if he ate them she launched vociferous complaints and he didn't love that.

Overall, even though the situation was objectively terrible for them, making peace with it improved their outlook. It was what it was, and they couldn't change the fact they'd established a connection they had no power to end. These were their new living conditions, and their new future.

After talking out the terms of their arrangement, they laid down some rules. Most of them were restrictions to keep them from inadvertently causing injury or distraction to the other party.

Laxus could honestly live with not being able to get horny because of the enchantment a lot easier than he could live with not drinking, but it was theoretically impossible for him to get a good buzz without also trashing Wendy. Wendy obviously had no interest in this and was upset he'd even done it once without realizing it would happen.

Wendy took careful notes, and he got the distinct impression it was mainly so she could bring it back to his remembrance in the future.

"Is that everything?" she asked.

"I think so."

She said, "Am I going to feel bad tomorrow?"

"Definitely."

She sighed. "Never again, please. How can I have a hangover before my first drink?"

"Magic?"

Laxus dug into his pocket. "If we're going to go the 'terrible and frightening secret powers' route, we might as well go all the way." He held out the ice dragon lacrima. "Candy?"

"I know you've said you're not a creep a lot of times recently, but coming to my room and offering me candy is…"

"Good point. I'm obviously still not a creep."

"You just break into girls rooms, offer them candy, get them drunk, and offer mutual exchange of fluids. But you're not a creep, just a non-creep who does a lot of creepy things."

Wendy would never, ever talk like this to anyone else. It was bizarre to hear her give him attitude, but he knew it was some combination of the fact she was drunk and she was also just really annoyed. Feelings-sharing with someone who was vastly different was mainly an intimately irritating experience. At the same time, she needed that confidence.

Above all, she wanted to be strong. He could see it in her, feel it the way she did.

Was it _wrong_ to take it?

After performing a forbidden ritual to escape death, she'd spent a lot of time during her grieving period wondering what right and wrong really were. Doing something wrong to live seemed right; the alternative of not doing the wrong thing and dying didn't seem noble or okay.

"Maybe someone else would benefit from it more."

Laxus argued, "We paid dearly for this. Strength to strength. If we gave this power to someone who less powerful, it would cheapen it."

"You could take it."

"It wouldn't mesh well with my lightning. It would get along better with your magic."

Wendy held out her hand and the lacrima rolled into her palm. "Is it wrong to take power that will help me protect my friends?"

"Of course not."

"Still, these seems reckless."

Laxus said, "You lose all the bets you don't make."

Wendy replied, "Is that how betting works?"

"No, of course not."

"I'm going to do this. For Charle. I think if she was here, she'd be telling me not to do this, and that my magic is enough, but I can't bear the idea that she died because I wasn't strong enough. Never again."

-Reviews Welcome-


	3. Growing Pains

From then, there was a war.

It was the quiet kind, once maybe no one would have known about.

One no one should have known about.

One where Wendy struggled to reconcile the world as it moved forward with the painful reality of Charle's passing. It had so many angles; she hated that others discounted the lives of Exceeds and often thought of them as pets. She hated how every smile came with a surge of guilt because she wasn't there to share it with her friend.

Deep inside, her mind played tricks on her, reminding her that everyone that had ever loved her was gone. Grandine died. Jellal was so far away he might as well have. And Charle? She died because of Wendy.

Wendy pulled the details apart a thousand times and put them back together again and knew in her heart that Charle must have returned because she had a premonition.

Between jobs, she developed a strange kind of gravity that led to many nights like this one, which she spent in the cemetery, leaning against the headstone. Maybe she had resolve to be strong, and maybe she knew she had to keep going and be the best wizard she could be. It didn't make the simple act of moving on any easier.

When it started to rain, she closed her eyes. "I miss you, Charle. I wonder, can you hear me? Are you mad at me?"

She looked up when she heard a thud and saw Bixlow had jumped the fence to the cemetery.

"Hey there. I thought that was you. What are you doing out this late?"

Wendy said. "Just visiting. What are you doing out this late?"

"I just got back from a date." He stuck his tongue out playfully. "She beat me with her purse when I told her what my babies are."

"They're souls, right?"

Bixlow nodded. "Sort of, and sort of not. Let's say you shout as loud as you can. The sound keeps traveling until it dissipates and runs out of power. It'll bounce off walls, travel through the earth, even go up into space. When a person leaves this world, it's a powerful event. You can't see it, or feel it, but it creates an echo."

His dolls floated up around him. "So these are not so much directly the souls of the dead as the echoes of their lives. They're fragmented, incomplete. What my magic does is give them a physical form so they can interact with this realm."

"That's not so bad."

The older wizard said, "Death is part of life, Wendy. It's scary, and no one wants to die. When you die, all the potential and the future you had in this world ends, but a new one starts. We are immortal souls that are bound to mortal bodies for exactly one lifetime. I don't know what happens after that…if there's heaven, or hell, or if people reincarnate. I do know that there's no reason to assume it would be a bad place."

Wendy considered this. "Maybe you're right. Do you think it's the same for Exceeds?"

Bixlow said, "Exceeds have human souls. I don't really know why, guessing the answer to that question is in another world. They're the same as us, but they live in different vessels. Your souls will probably meet again someday when all of this is over and it's time for you to leave your body. It's something that is going to happen to everyone, and it is _okay_. The life inside of you, and the life inside of Charle, are greater than the bodies we live in here in this world.

"Charle didn't disappear, she just went to a place you cannot go now. But someday, you will, and if your soul desires it, you'll meet her there. You have a whole life to live until then, one that should not be spent moping around in a graveyard. You should live the best life you can, so that when you meet your friend, you can tell her that the life she gave up her body to save, was lived to the fullest."

Wendy nodded.

Bixlow offered her a hand and pulled her directly up into a hug.

Wendy really loved everyone in the Thunder Legion:

Freed was so organized and disciplined, and perpetually considerate and observant. There was a certain carefulness and precision about everything that he did. Even his rare jokes seemed to have a sort of pinpoint accuracy about them. He was studious, and always read books as they traveled. He could be a little proper but was also always thinking of the entire team every time he made any decision.

Bixlow was genuinely one of the nicest and one of the most extroverted people she'd ever met, which almost seemed odd considering how dark his magic seemed. He liked to talk, liked to laugh, liked to be with everyone and to have a good time. His magic scared her at first, because it was strange for such a happy and caring person to wield something so dark, but he'd do anything for his friends, no questions asked. He treated his close friends as if they were truly precious to him.

Evergreen was the one Wendy spent the most time with since they usually roomed together on jobs. There was no woman more confident or naturally fabulous than Evergreen, who viewed glamor and self-care in the same way most people felt about breathing. Her toenail color changed as often as her mood, but she had been a voice of sanity in a group of guys who maybe needed some encouragement to get enough sleep, eat right, and take care of themselves.

Then there was Laxus.

Wendy felt like all the other members of the Thunder Legion had qualities that Laxus lacked. He was reckless and inconsiderate, so Freed balanced that out. He was awkward and didn't know how to express how he cared for others, thus Bixlow. He didn't care that much about important things that Evergreen cared dearly about.

She wasn't sure what she offered to the group, but she was grateful they pulled her in and kept her so close. The bonds of the Thunder Legion were powerful, and in a difficult time, they nurtured and comforted her.

A hug from Bixlow went a long way, because she knew he was embracing her as a true friend who valued their relationship.

He cracked a smirk as she released him. "C'mon. You need to sleep before we leave tomorrow. Unless your travel strategy is to pass out from exhaustion to avoid motion sickness."

"That actually doesn't sound bad."

As they walked to where they needed to part ways, Wendy grabbed onto his arm. "You're a really warm person, Bixlow."

"It's good to be alive with all of you," he said.

Then, she asked, "Is it okay for me to ask…how did you get your powers?"

He stopped. "No one else in the guild knows outside of Master and the Thunder Legion, but I guess you're one of us. It's a bad story."

"If you don't want to talk about it, it's fine."

"Friends aren't really friends if they don't know one another, are they?" he asked.

"I guess not."

Bixlow said, "My mom grew up in this little farming village in the middle of nowhere in Brago, but that little village was also where a dark guild was operating in secret. The villagers were afraid, so they tried to stay out of the way. One of the wizards in the dark guild became obsessed with my mom, but she didn't want him. She decided to run away from the village, with her new husband that she married in secret. They came all the way to this country, and started a new life. They bought their own farm, and raised a family.

"One night, that dark wizard happened to come through their town on a job and he saw my mom at the local market. She was due to give birth to me at the time. He put a curse on her that passed on to me in the womb, which made her so weak she died after having me. I was born with my eyes like this, but I was just a baby. I couldn't control it. My family abandoned me. The dark wizard took me back to Brago, and took care of me. I ran away as soon as I was old enough. This guild is the only real family I've ever had."

Wendy hugged his arm tighter. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not. I can't change anything that happened. I use my powers to live my life, and it's a good life."

"You're strong."

"I've got my friends, and my dreams. So do you."

After they parted ways, Wendy headed back to her room at the dorm and took a shower, glaring at herself in the mirror for awhile as she pondered the infinite future, and the fact she'd have to face it without Charle.

The roots of her hair were pink for a couple of inches, which was somewhat of a mystery, but her body was suddenly starting to change all over the place. She'd developed intense cravings for sugar and had suddenly started to 'eat like a dragon.' It took her no time at all to develop intense hunger, and when she did eat, it was more than a normal human being would consume in an entire day. Her eyes would stay magenta after leaving dragon force for longer and longer periods of time, leaving Wendy to wonder if the change would soon become permanent.

Laxus told her that he'd developed motion sickness and sugar cravings not long before his major growth spurt started, so she was evidently going through something that was normal for dragonslayers, but it wasn't pleasant.

Other parts of her body were suddenly changing too, with a few hairs growing in places that had always been smooth and breasts that were so sore even moving her arms hurt them sometimes.

Wendy was experiencing intense feelings about her body, which hadn't changed much for years. As much as she'd been excited about growing up, now that the process had started, she hated it. Her body felt strange, it hurt in places, every gross place she was growing hair was itchy, and her forehead was so oily all of the sudden they made her bangs stick together, which just made her hate her bangs.

Then because she was trying to grow her bangs, they were shaggy and long, and half pink now.

There were weird scaly rashes all over her body everywhere she grew anything extra when she was in dragon force, which seemed to be a problem with dragon puberty and not human puberty. They were itchy, hard, and sore, and now and then, huge chunks of skin would shed like she was some sort of lizard.

While she stared at herself in the mirror, she brushed her bangs away to find a fat, pink pimple right in the middle.

Wendy put on her robe, went down the hall, and knocked on Evergreen's door.

Evergreen answered in a characteristically fancy lace and silk nightgown.

"I need help…"

"What's wrong, Wendy?"

She pushed her bangs back. "H-Huge…"

Evergreen covered her mouth and giggled. "Are you a dragonslayer or a unicorn? Come here, I'll teach you everything I know."

Wendy was practically in tears as she sat on the stool in front of Evergreen's vanity and complained about having an oily, itchy, scaly, sore body, hair changing colors, hair growing in gross places, and the like.

The older woman combed her hair and pinned her bangs back. "This probably isn't what you want to hear, but it's actually normal to feel uncomfortable in your own body at this point. I think everyone goes through that. Not just girls, either. Growing up is awkward. It helps to try new things."

Wendy said, "My body is changing in ways I didn't want it to."

"Gajeel's body was permanently transformed too—humans aren't born with his eye color or covered in metal studs. If you get pink hair and eyes, it's probably a blessing. At least it's not chunks of metal or blotches of color everywhere. It's not about being beautiful or ugly to other people but accepting yourself and loving yourself."

Evergreen popped her pimple with a metal instrument and put medicine on it. "It helps to make a change sometimes."

"Really?"

"It's fun to reinvent yourself sometimes. If you feel like a little girl trapped in a growing body, then change it. A good makeover can help you see yourself in a new light. Fabulous is a state of mind, you know."

Wendy decided to trust Evergreen and listened carefully while Evergreen worked diligently.

She plucked Wendy's brows, gave her a razor and ran her through every in and out of hair removal, and the dirty, dastardly details of being a teenage girl, from the dreaded t-zone on her face to how to deal with sore breasts and what to do on the dreaded day she joined the ranks of the menstruating.

"It'll probably be soon, if you feel like this. You don't want to get caught off guard on a job and we run around with a bunch of idiot men. You want to have everything you need on you at all times, because whatever you imagine as being the worst possible time will definitely be the time it happens. And probably don't wear white bottoms for a while."

Wendy fidgeted. "Is something that gross really going to happen to me?"

"Of course. It's inescapable."

"Is it going to seem gross to me when it happens?"

"Yes, it's actually worse than you're thinking. You'll think you're dying the first time it's clotty or brown, but you'll survive," she replied.

Wendy shuddered. "How disgusting."

Evergreen smiled. "It's uncomfortable, but just one step on the way to becoming your true self."

They exfoliated, they moisturized, and Evergreen painted Wendy's fingernails and toenails while she told Wendy about all her own struggles as a teenager.

A coat of mascara and a little pink gloss on her lips did make her feel pretty.

Wendy eventually fell asleep on Evergreen's bed with spacers still stuck between her toes, and when Evergreen woke her up early in the morning, they went out before their job to shop.

A bra with some padding did help her breasts hurt less when she moved, but it made the clothes she tried on fit differently. It was empowering and embarrassing all at once. Since she needed a new outfit anyway, she eventually settled on halter dress that was the same shade of blue that her hair had been with a little gold pattern, tall brown boots, and a white cloak.

Since she grew wings on her back, wrists, and ankles during dragon force, she had to carefully make tiny slits in the boots.

After they returned to the dorm and packed to go, she met the team at the train station and Wendy pulled the hood on her cloak over her head, happy for a way to not be seen.

Laxus flipped it off with his index finger. "Smells like Wendy. Is Wendy?" he teased.

"Is Wendy," she answered, "My head feels lighter without all that hair."

"You're wearing makeup like you're grown?"

Evergreen punched him on the arm. "Don't be awkward, Laxus. She's fabulous, don't you think?"

"I think you look lovely, and possibly a little dangerous," Freed commented.

Bixlow's babies chanted, "We like!"

Laxus nodded. "It's nice. Evergreen got after me once and burned half my clothes."

Evergreen replied, "Wendy would understand if she'd been here for the cigars, heavy metal, and patterned shirts days you had. You would all be lost and terribly unfashionable if it weren't for me."

Wendy smiled. "It's hard for me to imagine Laxus being any more ridiculous than he is normally."

His answer to this was to pat her on the head. "I thought you were a nice little girl, now what?" he tousled the wild hair until it looked ever crazier than it did at first. "I'm having a strong craving for sour plums."

Due to their connection, Wendy felt most comfortable giving Laxus a hard time because she knew he liked being antagonized. Deep down, he was playful and even though he said he wasn't much of a people person, he liked to be surrounded by his team.

While they prepared to get on the train, Laxus asked, "Are you gonna hit me with the troia magic or what?"

"If I do, I feel like you're just going to eat sour plums in front of me. If I don't, you won't."

"I'll be a good boy. May the sky goddess bless me with her favor," he sarcastically replied.

Wendy cast the spell on him and boarded the train, heading to the back corner where she knew a few hours of nauseated misery awaited her. She pulled the hood over her head and pulled her legs up on the seat, trying to make herself as small as possible.

Laxus had no intention of tormenting the girl, as she seemed to be genuinely unhappy. Losing a close friend and being plunged into a period of change were both by themselves enough to harm someone's general outlook on the world. Puberty for him had been fast and difficult, causing him to grow from a cute little shrimp of a boy to the tallest person in the guild. Only then he was left tall and skinny, like a giant, angry string bean. It had taken years to grow into his body, and he had no fond memories of people poking fun of him, first for being tiny, then for being a bean pole.

Wendy's features were _quickly_ changing to permanently resemble her dragon form. He could see it in how her wide, innocent eyes were starting to gain a reptilian slant. Her fangs had gotten a bit longer, and most obviously—her hair changed colors. It was obvious she hated it literally as soon as she'd realized the roots of her hair were pink a week later.

He took a seat next to her and leaned over. "Growing up is like crossing the longest, shittiest bridge in the world. You're never comfortable, everything always feels wrong, you worry about something going wrong all the time. You think you're doing crossing it the wrong way or you look stupid while you're on your way. Then you get to the other side and you realize that damn bridge helped you become your true self."

His voice was so quiet only she could hear it.

"…that's something Gramps told me once. I thought he was full of shit. You probably think the same thing. By the time you believe it, it won't be useful information anymore."

Wendy could sense he was sincerely concerned and wanted to help her, which meant more than the actual words. Besides, her discomfort probably already transferred to him, so neither of them felt great. There was little evidence that their unusual magic bond could provide anything other than magic power and misery, but they'd accepted the fact they were stuck in their situation.

Laxus took off his spiked headphones when she looked up at him and slipped his hands inside the hood of her cloak. "Take these."

She was about to complain when the headphones started to play some somewhat angry-sounding music. After a brief pause, she decided she was okay with it, and tuned her head to the sound of the notes as the train started to roll.

The playlist was mixed, varying from rock to calming flute music to weird tribal music she'd never heard before and old songs she'd heard a few times in her life. It was some weird look into Laxus, and confirmation that the storm inside her that made her feel all kinds of ways at once wasn't unique to her. People were inconsistent and had wild emotions.

When they arrived at their job, Wendy took a deep breath of clean mountain air, knowing the air was partly to blame for what was happening to her body. The sky surrounded her constantly, flowing into her body with each breath, and as her magic strength grew, she became more aware of it, pumping into her.

From there, they continued by foot across a rocky pass to a tiny village, who said ghosts were terrorizing them.

Wendy noticed that Bixlow took his helmet off and looked around.

Laxus was sure there were no ghosts, not because he didn't believe in them but because he couldn't think of a reason they'd pick on a little mining village. It was an objectively absurd idea; spirits from the dead came back to pester a few dozen uneducated laborers living in the middle of literally nowhere.

It was clear from Bixlow's body language that he didn't see anything unusual, and if there had been any sort of spectral disturbance, he would have known.

Freed whispered in Laxus' ear, and the dragonslayer nodded in agreement.

"We know you're a dark guild," Freed announced, "There's a path to this town but the villagers told us to take a rocky backroad and refused to give us a ride. What's more, miners would be expected to have callused hands, and when you shook our hands, we didn't detect that. This village seems to have more money that a handful of miners would, and one of the houses has magic paraphernalia clearly visible in the window."

Laxus said, "Looking for convincing reasons not to turn this place into a crater."

The village headman said, "Okay, you got us. Just hear me out. I'm Zealous, the guildmaster."

He was struck by a bolt of lightning and Laxus growled. "Real name."

"Micah Warner, sheesh!" he said, tripping backward. "No fear about being lured to the village of a dark guild?"

Laxus replied, "The Thunder Legion fears nothing."

The guildmaster said, "We need help. Because of our status, we can't just ask the locals. And another dark guild might take advantage of the situation."

"You thought you could ask legit guilds and we'd just go along? Gutsy, but stupid," Laxus answered.

"There's a monster living in the mountains. It appears and disappears, but only when the moon is full. It's one of Zeref's demons. We can't defeat it. Please. It killed one of our kids. We'll do anything."

Laxus said, "We decline. Don't pull this shit again or I'll end you."

He tore up the job requests and started to leave when Wendy asked, "Don't they need help?"

Questioning Laxus was generally okay but doing so in front of someone outside of the team was something the others wouldn't have done. Considering those around were dark wizards, Laxus was clearly perturbed when he turned.

"Wendy, if they want help, they can apply for a license and ask the Magic Council for help. It's against the Fiore Guild Charter Law for us to assist a dark guild in _any_ way. It's supposed to be difficult for them. It's likely that they can't apply for a license because this village is harboring fugitive wizards. If we help them and they kill people, we bloody our hands and the reputation of our guild. We will leave."

She opened her mouth to argue but felt like it would probably be pointless.

A woman emerged from behind the group and fell to her knees behind Laxus.

"Please! I'm begging you! Bring my son's body back. None of these good for nothing men can do it!"

Laxus turned and said, "If I help you, I'm going to report your guild to the Magic Council."

"Do whatever you need to do! I don't care anymore!" she cried, begging on her knees.

The others wanted to argue this point with her, and Wendy interjected with, "How can you care more about being able to do wrong than someone in your guild?"

Freed put his hand on her shoulder. "This is a dark guild. They parted ways with the light a long time ago. They create tragedy, for others, and for themselves."

Laxus sighed. "I'll retrieve the body, but don't expect any favors. This isn't a task for our whole team. Bixlow…you come with me. The rest will keep an eye on camp. This is a den of snakes, Freed. Expect some sort of trap."

The lightning wizard poked the guildmaster directly over his heart. "Try anything and you'll never have to worry about the authorities. Not that I'll have to do anything to you. My rival dragonslayer is here."

Wendy wanted to roll her eyes at this, but he'd referred to her as this a few times before. As far as she could tell, it was purely what Evergreen called 'the eternal bullshittery of one Laxus Dreyar.'

From under the hood, she could feel everyone staring down her small form like it was some kind of joke, so she did what felt right, turned the magic headphones back on, and zoned out. This job had turned out to suck so far, even though it had seemed interesting at first. It was a trap, designed to attract more powerful wizards to the village and a body recovery job, something so morbid Laxus didn't even want to involve everyone else.

Wendy sat on a tree branch while they kept watch over the village, and after a while, felt someone approaching her. She went with a strategy of ignoring them, because she just didn't _feel_ like having a moment.

The tree branch shook when someone grabbed onto it and pulled themselves up, and she turned to find the person who interrupted her was actually the most beautiful boy in the whole world. At least…he was to her.

She could tell he was a couple of years older, and tall. He had muscles and green eyes, and a mess of spiky red hair. For some reason, she noted that his hands seemed big, and that this realization made her cheeks burn.

Wendy took the headphones off and lowered her hood.

The boy almost fell off the branch in surprise. "Holy crap, you're pretty. Are you really a dragonslayer?"

"That's right."

"That's amazing. I'm Remy."

"Are you a mage?"

He shook his head. "My dad is a wizard here. It sucks, having to keep secrets all the time. I was born without the ability to use magic, so I'm stuck here with all these wizards and I can't do much of anything."

"You're old enough to go somewhere else and start your life over, right?"

"I don't really want to leave my mom. She means everything to me. She's been really sick. I have a little sister too. Some of us can't just leave without letting the people we love down. Laxus doesn't seem very empathetic," Remy said.

Wendy nodded. "It's not his thing. He's actually not a very good person when he's angry, so I hope no one in your guild is planning anything."

Remy seemed like a genuinely nice kid who was trapped in a village he didn't belong in out of obligation and was unable to move forward with his life. He was interested in going on adventures, studying traditional alchemic medicines, and a world that was bigger than the one he felt forced to live in.

Freed gave periodically gave them a very uneasy look that bordered on threatening, but he didn't openly challenge her judgement for speaking to Remy.

The boy's attention made her feel incredibly normal and kind of amazing. Butterflies in her stomach left her feeling almost high as her heart raced in her chest.

"You want to see something really cool?" he asked.

"All right."

He jumped down from the tree, and when she followed suit, he caught her and put her down. "You okay?"

Wendy pushed his hands away. "I didn't need help, actually. Dragonslayers are really durable."

"Sorry. I'm just trying to be a gentleman. It's this way."

Wendy followed him but was abruptly stopped when a rapier passed through the air between them.

Remy gave him a sincere smile. "I can't even use magic. I'm not an enemy."

Freed looked him over and decided if he had any ability to use magic, it was insignificant enough that it was undetectable. Wendy could have crushed him into nothing, and while one could argue her distraction was foolish, she was acting like a normal teenager. The fact it was a bad idea to fraternize with a person living in a dark guild's village probably made what she was doing more appealing to her.

"Be careful. If you harm Wendy, you will perish. Are we clear?" Freed threatened.

Evergreen watched from a hut she was using as her perch to keep an eye on everyone but didn't comment on the situation or question Wendy's judgement.

Remy didn't take her far, leading her down a narrow path to a tiny clearing where a waterfall enclosed on almost all sides, nearly hidden in the mountain.

"I like to come here to think," he said, lightning a lantern on a rock opposite the waterfall.

"It's beautiful."

They talked.

About everything. His life in the little village, her life in Fiore. While she didn't disclose anything about her life that she needed to keep a secret, she felt comfortable confiding in him for some reason.

Remy put an arm around her when she cried about losing her friend, and carefully put a hand over hers.

His presence felt so warm to her, and his heart so pure.

"We may never see each other again in our lives, and that actually kind of sucks."

"You could leave this place. Fairy Tail is a good guild."

"I have to protect my family. What'll happen to my little sister if I go? You're such a wonderful person, and I like talking to you. I'll consider you a friend. How about that?"

Wendy nodded. "Okay."

Remy stood. "We should head back. It's getting late. Before we do, would it be okay if I kissed you?"

The girl stood in the most awkward way possible and felt him lightly rest his hands on her shoulders. His lips hovered above hers, and then brushed down so slightly.

It was the most magical thing in the world to her in that moment, and her hands reached out awkwardly as his wrapped around her and they kissed again, and then again. The kiss made her feel like she was on fire in the best sort of way, and when his mouth opened, hers did too.

When he broke the kiss, it was to spit a spent ampoule on the ground.

Wendy raised a hand to her mouth as her vision blurred and an overwhelming taste flooded her mouth. "You…poisoned me..."

Her body folded under her, suddenly paralyzed.

More alarming, not even her lungs would barely move, leaving her nearly unable to breathe.

Remy said, "It's all right, Wendy. Once you close your eyes, it won't hurt anymore. You'll never experience pain again."

"Why?" she weakly mouthed.

"Everything in this world is about gaining power, my little Wendy."

Remy threw down a blanket with a giant magic circle written on it in marker and then picked her up and put her down.

Wendy's fear of death quickly subsided when she realized there was exactly one person who probably knew the instant the poison touched her tongue. Laxus probably tasted it and knew she couldn't move her body. Her feelings were hurt, and she felt stupid, but there was no reason for her to think she'd pay for her mistake with anything other than a little embarrassment.

Besides, anything prescribed for a human would be nothing to a dragonslayer. She could eat, sweat, and fight like no one else, and while she wasn't as obvious about that as others, she was confident the poison wouldn't last long.

She briefly considered the possibility the poison crossed the eroded barrier between her and Laxus and he was also feeling ill but didn't want to think about that because she knew he'd be pissed.

Sure enough, a few seconds and feeling returned to her fingers.

When Remy leaned over her smooth out a wrinkle in the magic circle, she whispered something, and when he leaned down to hear the words, she hit him right in the side of the face with her Sky Dragon Roar, sending him floating high above the waterfall so he could crash somewhere away from her.

She was trying to get up when a rather off-kilter lightning bolt struck in that tiny space and a very confused Laxus stumbled around a few times, and then laid on the ground.

The teenager said, "You got poisoned from me?"

"Is that what happened?"

She took a deep breath and calmly said, "Laxus, I don't want to talk to your right now. Everything is fine."

"So I left you to look after enemies and you let them poison you and now we're both unable to fight if we need to."

"Everything is fine."

"Well, no…I'm actually really pissed off right now. I don't want to be a piece of shit and cuss you out until you cry yourself to sleep, but you definitely deserve it," he said.

Wendy stood on wobbly legs and replied, "And I said I don't want to talk to you right now. I am going through something right now and you're not helping."

"I can't help, I can't move my fucking legs and I'm only here because I came to make sure you're okay."

"What were you going to do with paralyzed legs?"

Laxus was quiet for a moment and said, "I basically understand why you are being obnoxious, but it's still really annoying."

"You don't understand anything. I have something to do."

He tried to raise his legs and then sighed. "Am I somehow absorbing it as it leaves you? I'm feeling worse and you seem to be getting better. Maybe if I concentrate, I can somehow…"

Wendy was about to go hobbling after Remy and…well, she wasn't sure what she was going to do, but she was angry and wanted to express that fully. Except, Laxus somehow mastered the flow of poison magic and her body became totally limp again as he jumped up.

"There we go," he said.

Laxus lifted her off the ground and wielded her at her side with one arm like a sack of flour as he headed out of the little inlet.

"Put me down!"

"You're a dragonslayer. Ain't nobody making you do anything you don't want to do. Unless there's a reason you can't move your arms or legs."

"Please!" she begged, her voice breaking slightly. "Please don't do this to me."

"Do what?"

Laxus flipped her and held her up in front of him like someone might hold a small child, hands under her armpits, allowing her whole body to dangle.

She was frozen, and he looked around at where they were.

Wendy was somehow taken to a location where her scent wouldn't carry once the spell began damaging her body. Laxus had been effectively moved out of the way, and so had Bixlow, whose magic was invaluable because everyone knew it was extremely potent but no one really knew what it was he could see. Of course he wouldn't take a half-grown girl going through a hard time on a mission to go clean up a monster slaying.

Not that there had been any slaying, or any monster for that fact.

Wendy said, "He seemed nice."

"Who? It smells like you were here by yourself."

The teenager answered in a shaking voice, "It was a boy. He seemed nice. He was…he was cute. A couple of years older. He listened to me, and he was kind. He wanted to show me this cool place. We sat and we talked for a long time. I told him things I maybe don't talk about all the time. He held me and it felt good and then we kissed and..and…"

Laxus leaned in smelled her and sniffed her mouth.

It was the first time Wendy had really seen him use his sense of smell in such a weirdly animalistic way. The first gens did it all the time, but Laxus was generally smoother and more discreet about his less human traits.

"Teenage boys are smell bad, and genuinely smell worse when they get excited about anything. There's no scent in this cave. There's no scent on you. The sticky stuff around your mouth is smeared everywhere like you let someone be disgusting with you, so that doesn't make sense."

Wendy struggled against him. "Put me down."

When he did, she was able to stay standing by leaning on the wall. "Something is missing. Remy had this blanket that had a magic array on it. Like he prepared the magic circle in advance. It was really complex. He said he was going to take my powers. He said 'everything is about gaining power, my little Wendy.' The blanket disappeared…I blew him out of here, up over the waterfall. I don't understand. I didn't sense any magic from him."

Realization flashed in his eyes and Laxus said, "Wendy."

"What?"

"I'm going to take you up and have the others take you home. I have something to do and I'll explain it when I get back."

Wendy could sense rage radiating off him, even though he showed no sign of it. It was so hot it almost burned her and left her trembling. Whatever he'd figured out, it made him so angry that Wendy was almost afraid of him and she knew he wouldn't ever hurt her on purpose. Then, something deeper that she immediately recognized as bloodlust even thought he'd never experienced it before.

Something she said to him made him so angry that he wanted to kill someone.

Wendy covered her mouth for a moment. "Are you going to kill someone?"

"Yes."

"Please calm down. It's not a big deal. We face things like this, and I'm sorry I made a mistake. We can just go home. Nobody has to die. Are you going to kill that guy? Being a jerk isn't a crime punishable by death. You need to think this over," she said.

He picked her up and jumped up through the waterfall, where he gave her to Freed.

"Take her back. She'll feel better later."

Freed started to apologize with, "I'm sorry. I saw her talking with someone but—"

"Just go," he said.

They were the Thunder Legion, and one part of being in Thunder Legion meant respecting and listening to its leader. Had Wendy listened when Laxus wanted to walk away from the village earlier, none of this would have happened. Once again, she was left feeling responsible for the consequences of doing what she felt was right.

This time, she didn't argue.

Wendy complied, and went home with the others.

When they arrived at the guild the following afternoon, Freed briefed Makarov on the overall details as he didn't know too many of the specifics. Freed also didn't know much about what happened to Wendy except that she'd gone off with a boy and he'd poisoned her. He had a lot of questions about the situation, but he trusted Laxus to explain them when he returned.

The more Wendy thought about it, the more she was worried. The feeling of bloodlust when she was near Laxus frightened her, and she wondered who it was that he was angry at.

On the evening of the third day after they arrived, she sensed he'd come close enough she could feel his feelings, but it was strange to sense exhaustion and fear. He skulked around at the edge of the town for a while, so when she left the guild to go home, she took a detour into the forest and found him sitting under a tree, staring despondently at the ground.

His fists were bloody from fighting.

And under the fear, he seemed very sad.

"Laxus, what happened? Are you okay?"

He shook his head.

Gildarts suddenly entered the clearing. "I thought I sensed a big sulking baby."

Laxus looked up at him and said, "Ivan is dead."

The old wizard's expression fell in an instant. "Shit. What happened?"

"I beat him to death," the lightning wizard answered.

Wendy covered her mouth. "You own dad?"

Gildarts said, "Wendy, why don't you go home. I'll come talk to you later."

Laxus answered, "It's fine. Wendy is going to figure it out and I promised what happened on the last job."

"The one where the villagers set a trap?"

Laxus replied, "Ivan. Ivan did all of that. He posted a job that my team was most likely to take, recruited those villagers, created a situation where Bixlow and I left the team. Bixlow has seen Ivan's soul, so he would have known, and obviously, it would be a big fucking problem for him if I figured out he was there.

"He found a place where Wendy's scent wouldn't carry, and then he lured Wendy there by disguising himself as a boy and seducing Wendy. Talked her into kissing him and gave her a mouthful of Garagul buds. He was about to cast the Lacrimaris Lux spell on her."

Wendy covered her mouth. "That was…that can't be true."

Gildarts darkly answered, "You should have told me. I would have taken care of it."

"Laxus killed his own father?" Wendy asked in horror, "And you think it's fine?"

The old wizard said, "Lacrimaris Lux is a spell that steals a dragonslayer's powers but kills the dragonslayer. Ivan created that spell to use on Laxus. It is named after him."

Laxus leaned his head against the tree. "Fuck, if anyone in this world ever had it coming…I wouldn't have done it if I felt like he'd learned his lesson."

"But he can't. He would have come for you again," Gildarts said in agreement.

Wendy said, "For me? I wouldn't never have wanted…"

Laxus stood up and shrugged. "I did it to protect the guild. Nothing more, nothing less. The part that's actually hard is what happens now."

When he started down the path, he stopped and looked over at Wendy.

"Little dragon."

Wendy said, "What is it?"

"It's going to be all right. The sun always comes out eventually."

Gildarts watched this exchange and found a strange sense of closeness seemed to exist between Laxus and Wendy. Although Laxus worked hard to keep a certain distance between him and others, an exception had been made here. He genuinely seemed to care for her and as grizzly as it was, made a difficult decision that was going to have consequences for more than just himself and his now deceased father.

The real question was whether Makarov could handle learning that his son's unimaginable evil had ended with his grandson executing him to protect an innocent person that Ivan had chosen to involve.

Gildarts walked with Wendy for a while, but she seemed to have a lot of things she wanted to keep private. There were multiple layers of devastation heaped on the girl's shoulders from the loss of Charle to what Ivan had done to her to the fact Laxus executed his father for attempting to take her life.

Even though he seemed to remember her as one who exposed emotions freely, Wendy didn't seem to know how to express how she felt, so she seemed almost frozen. She wanted his company, and needed his encouragement, but didn't know how to talk about what was happening inside of her spirit.

Laxus meanwhile continued on home, where Mirajane was helping Makarov with the house in his absence.

"Laxus, welcome home. I'm glad you're here. Master is being a little difficult tonight."

He seemed confused by her friendly banter, like the words made no sense to him in his current state. Reverting to his least socially capable self, he didn't say anything at all and went upstairs to wash up without even greeting his grandfather.

Laxus found it peculiar that Makarov didn't somehow sense Ivan had died, but the fact the old man could telepathically reach his grandson and not his son spoke volumes about everything.

By the time he got out of the shower, Mirajane had gone, and Makarov was sitting in the living room with a blanket and some hot tea.

"Could you get me a real drink? That Mirajane is always telling me about the healing benefits of tea. Tea can go to hell—I want beer!"

Makarov saw the severe look on his grandson's face. "What's wrong?"

"Ivan tried to murder Wendy. He was going to use his spell on her. You know how he is…he would have come for her again. Wendy isn't jaded or terrible enough to avoid his dolls, hallucinations, illusions, and tricks. I made a decision. And then I acted on it. Ivan is gone."

Laxus tried to keep his voice steady, but he couldn't bear the weight of his own words as he watched the shock and pain in his grandfather's eyes as he spoke.

He fell to his knees and rested his head on Makarov's knee. "I'm so sorry, Gramps. There wasn't another way. Forgive me."

Laxus trembled when he felt Makarov's hand on his head.

"Laxus, my grandson, look at me."

He looked up and the old man said, "It's me that should apologize. I always knew it would probably end this way. I became old, I kept up hope. Long after it was foolish and dangerous. I shouldn't have allowed the burden of protecting the guild from Ivan fall to you. I have failed you. I have failed the guild."

When the old man broke down into sobs, Laxus could barely take it because he knew when he decided to eliminate Ivan from the world that it was going to hurt the only person who had always cared for him.

To be the cause of that devastation was unbearable.

Makarov didn't argue about whether it was necessary, because he knew in his heart that Laxus wouldn't have done it unless he felt like it was truly the right thing to do.

And he didn't disagree, when Laxus sat there on his knees in front of him and told him what Ivan had done to cause Laxus to decide he would remove the threat of Ivan from the world permanently.

Then they talked, long into the night, and Laxus cried too, because under everything, he was still Ivan's son. And, like his grandfather, he maybe fanned the flame of hope long after it had been extinguished.

"Mmphh…"

Laxus looked up with puffy eyes. "What?"

Another unintelligible sound came from his grandfather, oddly from one side of his mouth as half of Makarov's face just slid into a state of paralysis.

"Gramps? Gramps! Say my name."

Syllables slurred together that didn't even resemble his name.

Porlyusica had told him to look very specifically for these signs because of Makarov's delicate physical state, and that if he ever did see them, to bring him to her immediately, no matter the hour or circumstance.

"I'm taking you to Porly. It'll be okay."

He ran all the way to her hut with his grandfather in his arms and kicked the door in.

Porlyusica was asleep on her bed in a worn flannel nightgown that stretched to the floor, and would have ripped in a new one or maybe a new six until she saw he was holding Makarov.

"What happened?"

The younger wizard said, "His face became half-frozen and he couldn't talk. Then he just lost consciousness."

The old woman gestured to the empty patient bed and grabbed all her tools along with tools, medicines, and potions.

Laxus didn't get in her way, and he didn't ask questions. When she asked him to grab something from a shelf or to help move Makarov so she could continue examining him with her tools, he did so without complaint. The grave look on her face said enough, and his senses told him the rest.

As dawn broken, she put most of her tools away.

"Laxus."

"How bad?" he asked.

Porlyusica solemnly answered, "Your grandfather is dying, Laxus."

"What about healing magic?"

"Healing magic is for the uncomplicated tissues of the body. Muscle, organs, maybe bones. The nervous system and brain are complex. I don't know of anyone that has ever successfully healed anyone with this type of injury. I can't help him."

Laxus replied, "We have another healer."

"Wendy won't be able to help him either, and if you bring him here and she attempts and fails, she'll just feel like it's her fault. I'm familiar with her magic and I know that Makarov is beyond her help. He's beyond medicine."

The old doctor broke it down for him, since it was obvious that Makarov hadn't explained to his grandson how poor his health had been since Alvarez. Fairy Law created balance by defeating enemies at the expense of the spellcaster's life force, a price it charged to the user's nervous system. Although he'd managed to escape with his life, the nerves in his legs were essentially nearly totally dead, as were most in his hands.

This caused a disorder that had spread, slowly. Since the brain was part of the nervous system, he was always going to die. Mavis' actions on that day just bought him a little more time, and that time had simply expired. The extra mileage had been spent, and his body couldn't sustain Makarov's life any longer.

Laxus asked, "Will he wake up?"

"No. He'll remain asleep until he slips away. It won't be long."

"This is my fault. I gave him bad news earlier. This was probably the worst night of his life. I caused him upset and distress, and now he's dying," he confessed.

Porlyusica replied, "If it wasn't tonight, it might have been tomorrow or the next day. He's been dying for a long time Laxus. You know that. You've seen pill bottles in cabinets. You saw how he was after he cast that spell."

After pulling up a chair, he sat down next to his grandfather and reached out to lightly hold his hand.

She asked, "You'll stay with him?"

"Until the end."

-Reviews Welcome!-


	4. Separation

Wendy woke up, and she felt like something inside of her was being physically ripped apart. It was intense, scary, and left a weight on her chest that made her feel like her heart could barely beat.

When she tried to stand, she crumbled to the floor next to the bed.

For a minute, she struggled to understand what was happening to her. In some ways, the complexity and acuity of it reminded her of right after Charle had been killed.

When she realized the feelings were bleeding across her magic connection to Laxus, she became scared because she didn't know him to necessary have a lot of strong feelings one way or another. She affected him all the time, but when it went the other way, it usually wasn't intense at all. He got annoyed and frustrated a lot, but not severely.

Something intense to the point of life-changing was obviously happening in his heart.

Wendy knew he probably didn't want her to come around, but for better or worse, they were stuck together whether they wanted to be or not. If it affected him, it affected her. It was irreversible, unchangeable, and as time went by, the fact they'd be like this until one of them died was genuinely upsetting.

She summoned her strength and dressed quickly, and then escaped through the window and flew unseen to where he was.

Since his location was Porlyusica's hut, Wendy was afraid something had happened and that Laxus was dying.

When she landed right outside the door, Porlyusica was coming in with some herbs from her garden.

"Wendy, why are you here? It's the middle of the night."

She caught the scent of death, and of Makarov, and said, "Master?!"

"Go home, Wendy. Makarov is an old man. This is life. People get old, and people die. There's nothing for you to do here."

The idea that Laxus was being ripped to pieces on the inside by the idea that his grandfather was going to die made hit her in the heart. There was no one more detached or awkward than he was and knowing how much he was hurting said so much about what Laxus was really like and how much his grandfather meant to him.

Wendy wanted to help.

More than anything.

She loved master too, as the father of the guild and the person whose passion had built an entire generation of incredible people who could face any obstacle.

And maybe part of it was that what was happening to Makarov wasn't fair in the first place. A person with a massive amount of magic power typically lived a very long time. Using Fairy Law during the big battle ruined his body. Half of his body was basically dead and the rest was in poor shape, and his health had been truly awful since then.

Wendy said, "Master isn't dying because he's old. He's dying because he used that spell."

"Perhaps, but he made the decision he felt was best and he knew the cost. The nerves in his body are ruined. His quality of life has been diminishing for a while."

"Nerves…" she mumbled the word and thought for a while, and then abruptly went into the hut.

Laxus looked up from Makarov's bedside and roughly said, "Wendy, why did you come here?"

"Because you were hurting."

Porlyusica, to Laxus, was actually probably the worst person for Wendy to utter this in front of because Porlyusica was going to ask questions—a lot of them.

"Be careful about what you say. You're going to cause trouble," he warned.

The younger dragonslayer exclaimed, "I know what I'm doing. I know how to help Master. If you want me to go, I won't. Master means a lot to everyone. You're not the only one who is going to lose someone they love."

Porlyusica said, "I have some questions about what's going on here, but I'll hold them for later considering the situation. Wendy, Makarov is beyond magic. Go home."

Wendy answered, "Healing magic doesn't work well on nerves because they're tiny and they're all over the body. There's no way to make it travel to the right places. Nerves carry signals all over the body using electrical pulses, so that means they're conductive."

"I don't know how that helps us here. Electricity _damages_ nerves because of that fact," Porlyusica said.

She turned to Laxus and said, "If I had enough magic and I could give my healing magic the properties of lightning, it would work."

Laxus said, "You're talking about that thing again?"

"What thing?" the old woman asked.

She nodded.

Porlyusica glared at Laxus in a way that strongly suggested she was going to rake him over hot coals for whatever was really going on. If she came into the knowledge of their strange connection, it would be inconvenient for them, but Laxus also knew he'd pay just about any price to save his grandfather.

He reached over for a pair of scissors on a nearby table that Porlyusica had been using to snip herbs and cut his hand, and then gave it to Wendy, who did the same before pressing her palm against his.

They'd forgotten how much of a rush it really was, feeling their magic become suddenly intensely amplified and deepened. The sum of all their increased magic flowed into Wendy, who became electrified.

Wendy held her hands up as her blue glowing healing magic swirled around Laxus' lightning, and then, after intense concentration, folded onto it to create blue lightning. The sheer amount of magic in her body bordered on godlike as she put her hands on Makarov's chest and let the lightning-like healing magic flow through his body.

By the time she collapsed on the floor, they were both completely out of magic.

Makarov awoke with a start and much to everyone's surprise, seemed to have somehow aged in reverse by a few years. Or possibly, his poor health only made him look older than he was, and Wendy had successfully restored him in a way not known to be possible using magic.

Wendy couldn't move, sitting on her knees next to the bed as she leaned on it for support.

"What was that? I was slipping away, and then there was a light?" he said holding his hands up.

The guildmaster knew immediately something miraculous had happened to his body because he could feel his legs and after cautiously wiggling one toe, jumped out of the bed and stood on his own two feet for the first time since that battle.

Porlyusica said, "I'd like an explanation as well. Wendy was somehow able to heal you."

"Your magic is this strong?" Makarov asked.

"No," the old healer said, "Wendy and Laxus are using forbidden magic."

Wendy watched the cut on her hand seal over with gold scales again. "Just because it's forbidden, does that make it wrong? Letting someone I care about die seems like the thing that should be forbidden."

Makarov remembered the conversation he confronted Laxus about the fight with the dragon and his grandson admitted they had withheld information and asked for his trust. So, he looked up to Laxus for an explanation.

Laxus, who was still sitting on the chair, crossed his arms. "What?"

Porlyusica said, "I had contact with Wendy's dragon a while back. She transmitted a few spells to me, and also talked to me about Wendy's future. She said when Wendy grew into a woman to keep her away from Laxus at all costs and ensure they were never together intimately because an extremely powerful magic reaction would occur…one that would probably ruin both of their lives."

Laxus said, "Too fucking late. During the fight with the dragon, there was a lot of blood and ours mixed. We didn't know what it was, but it was a get out of hell free card and we used it. The first time we did it, we were so powerful we were able to kill the dragon."

Porlyusica said, "Do you know the source of that power?"

"We figured it out later," Wendy said.

The old woman said, "Grandine informed me, but I don't think she was aware blood could have caused the reaction. She said it was irreversible. What exactly has happened after that battle?"

Laxus said, "Wendy and I share a link. I thought it was telepathic, but our bodies are also involved. I taste sweets when she eats them, she gets drunk when I drink, and when she got poisoned, it ended up in my body too. It's a real pain in the ass. The magic link makes us so powerful it's a little unreal."

Makarov asked, "What _is_ the source of the power?"

Porlyusica said, "Before Wendy came along, Grandine's lifemate was the lightning dragon king, Fulguros. He was killed by a dragonslayer, and part of his body was salvaged and lost to time. When Wendy came to this guild, she met Laxus, who had a piece of Fulguros heart inside of his body. That's what a dragonslayer lacrima is…an actual part of a dragon's heart. She was worried that the dormant connection would be revived if they ever had intimate contact."

Makarov listened carefully, both angry at Laxus for keeping such a huge secret, but yet sympathetic to his reasons for doing so.

Wendy weakly said, "Forgive us, Master."

"You don't have to ask for forgiveness for surviving. I would have you break every rule that has ever been written to live," the old man said, and then, looked up at his grandson. "Laxus, is this connection you have the reason you were able to save Wendy from Ivan?"

"Yes."

Wendy decided to follow Laxus' lead and let him explain everything. It was transactional then; do something forbidden and live. Here, it was save Makarov and be exposed. They weren't really hard decisions to make, not to her and not to Laxus.

After nearly all the cards were on the table, Makarov just nodded.

"I see…You're doing the best you can. I suppose that's all you can do. There's one unanswered question,  
he said, "If the dragon lacrima that grant those like yourself their powers come from a part of a dragon's corpse, did you accidentally leave one on that mountain?"

"No," Laxus said.

"Do you still have it?"

"I gave it to Wendy and she ate it," he explained.

Porlyusica asked, "Can Wendy wield ice dragon magic?"

"A little," she answered.

Makarov was genuinely angry about this, because Laxus done something to someone in the guild to dramatically change their powers without even mentioning it to him. On the other hand, Laxus was unable to dual-wield like Natsu and Gajeel could, so it was unusual that he'd pass on an opportunity to improve his own magic.

Then again, Laxus had enemies and if any of them ever found out they could come at him through Wendy, it would be a problem for her. Reinforcing her magic abilities was possibly the best thing for him as well.

Porlyusica asked, "Ivan came at Wendy, did he?"

"He's gone. Let's not dwell on it," Makarov quickly said.

"Gone?!"

Makarov tensely said, "Let's not talk about it."

After giving the situation careful thought, Porlyusica said, "There's a part of this issue that you and Wendy seem to have not figured out. Grandine said if this thing she feared ever occurred, you'd lose the ability to chose partners for yourselves. You'd only ever be able to be with the other."

"Are you serious?!" Wendy asked.

Laxus and Wendy were instantly and completely horrified by this for all of their own reasons.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Laxus asked.

"Exactly what I said. Grandine heard about the kind of person you were while inside of Wendy, but she didn't know about Fulguros' magic until you met Wendy for the first time on Tenrou Island. You obviously aren't anything like someone a mother would want her child to be with. Ignoring the substantial age gap, you have some issues."

Makarov said, "Easy, Porlyusica. This is obviously a problem. A big problem. But everything they have endured has been a consequence of choosing to live, and that is not wrong."

Porlyusica replied, "You've obviously noticed Wendy's body is going through some intense changes lately. Her appearance is changing to how she looks during her purest dragon form permanently. That didn't happen to any of the other dragonslayers. Whether due to this issue or due to the ice dragon magic, she's magically imbalanced. And, she seems to be going through it lately. What if her body is trying to catch up to his?"

"That's not it. It was already about to happen," Laxus said.

"How do you know?"

Laxus explained, "Because I'm a dragonslayer. Did we forget that I was a little flimsy kid when I was Wendy's age? In order, I developed motion sickness, intense hunger, and then the last thing that happened was I suddenly had an unreal addiction to sugar. When the sugar cravings started, so did my growth spurt. All those things happened to Wendy. It was a trash experience for me, I assume it'll suck for her. But it had nothing to do with me."

Porlyusica said, "What about her appearance?"

"I don't think any of the stuff going on with her body has anything to do with me. It's unreasonable to think it does. Wendy mastered dragonforce years earlier in her life than anyone else and uses it more often. You're mixing a lot of ideas together and it's not helpful," he added.

Makarov found his grandson had clearly defined the issues within his own mind and seemed confident that while he and Wendy were linked, that mere fact was driving the change in Wendy. He found this believable, because he'd noticed she'd suddenly started eating everything in sight and had become vulnerable to vehicular motion.

Wendy seemed mostly lost, stuck at the center of a vortex of change. From losing her best friend, to growing up, and then also this strange magic bond, she was clearly trying to cope. Laxus had protected her, keeping any of them from knowing just how involved her personal turmoil was in case anyone would realize all the vulnerabilities they'd obtained.

The idea that they'd limited themselves romantically was irrelevant for the time being. Laxus was fine being alone and she wasn't an adult. It was likely going to darken Wendy's perspective as she grew, but there wasn't anything they could do about that.

There wasn't anything anyone could do about any of it.

The two wizards were trapped by a series of difficult inevitabilities, and they were doing the best they could, protecting each other and their secret. In exchange for the price they were paying, they had obtained the ability to obtain magic that was at the legendary level.

Wendy was able to transcend what were believed to be the limits of healing magic just because that's what she wanted to do.

Makarov said, "Are you both all right? Wendy?"

She nodded. "I'm actually doing well, Master. It may not look that way, but I'm doing okay. I've been going through a lot of things. I lost Charle, but the Thunder Legion has been kind to me and they've helped me. Evergreen helps me feel better about myself, and Bixlow helps me know I can be a happy person and have fun even if things aren't perfect, and Freed reminds me we all feel like outcasts sometimes. Laxus taught me to use every advantage I can, to protect myself, and to be strong."

Her eyes seemed to be burning with determination when she finished with, "Not every day is good, but I am taking steps forward with my friends! Does anything else matter if I always have them? We'll laugh, and we'll grow, and we'll be strong together. So I'm okay."

Porlyusica asked, "Are you all right, Laxus?"

"It is what it is. Life goes on, right? We've gotten used to most of it by now."

Makarov said, "That's good enough. I agree that discretion is critical."

Laxus replied, "The only reason you know is because _Wendy_ didn't want you to die."

"But Laxus, you were breaking on the inside…I could barely move my body, you were so sad. I've never experienced such intense fear or grief. Your eyes were watery when I got here," she said.

Laxus glared at her, in utter disbelief that she broadcast his feelings. "Tch, whatever. He's old. I don't care if it kicks it. I'm feeling a craving for sour plums though."

Wendy covered her mouth and puckered her whole face. "No, anything but that!"

Makarov reached out an arm with titan magic to pinch his grandson's cheek. "My little grandson loves his granddaddy very much. I bet his little heart would just be broken if I passed on. I can just see him, weeping at my side. Visiting my grave with flowers."

"Not gonna happen," Laxus quickly answered, clearly embarrassed.

Porlyusica said, "Are you ashamed that someone called you out on actually caring about the person who raised you? It's not like you were an easy child to raise."

"Why is this suddenly about me? Since the old geezer can use his legs, I'm just gonna..go."

Laxus made a quick exit, and the Makarov and Porlyusica spoke to Wendy for a while longer. She did generally seem to be doing as well as one might be in her position, and since the problem she and Laxus had lacked any realistic remedy, that was the best they could hope for.

They sent Wendy on to the dorm, and Makarov told Porlyusica the details of Ivan's death, the catalyst for the night's events. The old healer wondered if Laxus would have gone as far as he did if Wendy hadn't been in the unique role she was, but Makarov pointed out that Ivan was living on borrowed grace and was probably emboldened because he'd been unable to use his legs.

Makarov said, "Ivan knew if he came at us again, there would be consequences. At the Grand Magic Games, it didn't matter—Laxus wrecked him and his guild. The power difference between Laxus and his father is so great and Laxus is smart to his father's trickery…I don't think Ivan could do anything to hurt him at this point. Wendy is different. She's not as strong, but more importantly, Ivan hasn't twisted her into knots. She trusts easily. She doesn't question everything in the world."

"What would you have done if the information had come to you and you had to decide what to do about it?" she asked.

"I haven't been able to fight for so long. I've always known that if I had to, I could ask Gildarts to take care of it. He should have been the one. He'll say he should have been the one. God knows he's wanted to put Ivan in the grave for a long time. What Ivan did was disgusting, indefensible, and despicable. I think the right thing to protect the guild happened, but the wrong person did it."

She nodded. "Agreed. I don't think any good could possibly come from Laxus beating his own father to death. There's already a lot going on in him."

Makarov rubbed his legs. "Wendy's magic is incredible. My body feels great, like I'd never cast that spell. Not even once. Like I drank less in my life and ate better."

"You should take better care of it, Makarov. No reason to waste a miracle."

-XXX-

It was well into the morning before any of the parties privy to the previous night's excitement stirred. The night had been dark, tiring, and strange, and the next morning was just the weird new world.

Wendy was about to see if she could drift back to sleep when she heard a pop followed by metal rubbing against glass.

Laxus was sitting on her windowsill, opening a jar of sour plums.

"Laxus? Are you serious?"

"Hmm?" he said, popping the first one into his mouth.

Wendy tasted the sour in her mouth, and it was so powerful it made her toes curl. He ate them, one by one, and then turned the jar up and started to drink the tart juice, which only made her suffering more intense.

"I'm sorry I told people you have feelings!" she managed to say as she writhed in pure suffering.

At some point, she reached out and grabbed her alarm clock, hurling it at him.

Laxus simply dodged it and laughed.

"What's the matter, little dragon? Afraid of fruit?"

She laid down and pulled the covers over her head once he finished exacting his revenge for telling others about his emotions.

Laxus said, "Anyway, I'm leaving."

Wendy sat up again. "What?"

"I'm going to go do stuff. Visit other places. The world is a big place, and I'd like to see more of it."

"Is it because of what Porlyusica said?"

"Partly. I also just really need to get away. It's hard to explain."

Wendy asked, "When are you coming back?"

"I might not."

"You can't be serious!"

Laxus said, "It's not really a big deal. People come and go from guilds. I joined, I got kicked out, I joined again, the guild dissolved, I joined, and now I'm leaving again. Most of the people who were in the guild twenty years ago have moved on with their lives. They move on and find other jobs, or go to other guilds, maybe start their own."

She jumped out of the bed in her pajamas and ran over to him. "But you're Laxus!"

"It'll be fine. Everything will be fine. Magnolia isn't the only place in the world where people can live and be okay."

He gave her a little metal box, which she took and opened. It contained several magically sealed vials of blood. "For those rare occasions when you really need to kick the shit out of somebody."

Wendy said, "What if I never see you again?"

Laxus just shrugged. "Then you don't ever see me again. You can take the Thunder Legion. They need a heavy hitter. Be the best wizard you can be, make sure you look out for everyone. In a few years, you could be the strongest wizard in the guild if you really work at it. And you should, because Fairy Tail needs powerful wizards who can stand up for everybody."

"But Laxus, everyone leaves me," she whimpered.

"This is for you own good, Wendy. You'll be better off this way. Take care."

Wendy jumped and hugged his neck tightly. "I'll never forget you, Laxus. Thanks for everything."

"I ruined your life, but you're welcome," he answered, awkwardly patting her on the back.

When he left and went home, he went to work at packing his things. Leaving Magnolia hadn't been a particularly viable option previously because of his grandfather's poor condition, but Wendy had restored his vitality to the point he didn't need help to take care of himself and probably wouldn't for a long time.

Makarov stood in the doorway to his room and asked, "Are you going on a job?"

"Nah. Leaving the guild. I don't like the guildmaster and he's probably going to be around for a while," his grandson answered.

His grandfather watched him carefully, trying to figure out what was going on in Laxus' mind, but he doubted even Laxus could have explained himself fully. Between killing his father and trying to deal with everything else that had happened, it was most likely Laxus was in overload mode and he always made himself scarce when he reached that point.

Laxus said, "It's fine. You don't have to worry. It's nothing crazy."

"Where are you going to go?"

"Someplace far away. I've been dreaming of a place lately. I don't know where it is, but I'm sure it exists. I don't know why I'm dreaming about it, or what's there, but I feel like it's a memory I didn't make myself. Maybe it's a memory Fulguros managed to preserve. There's definitely something extremely important about it. Besides, I like being out there in the wild, visiting new places, being free. It's not a big deal," he answered.

Makarov asked, "Is it because of what Porlyusica said about Wendy?"

Laxus pulled the tie on his bag. "Wendy and I have a certain sense of mutual horror about that. I don't even know why Porlyusica would mention it in front of her. That was stupid. It's just going to stress her out."

With a concerned expression, Makarov asked, "What happens when she's grown and doesn't want to be alone? She is going to grow up. You'll look at her through different eyes someday."

"Not if I don't ever see her again. Besides, if I get far enough away, long enough, I think it'll weaken the connection between us. I don't know that we could make it become completely dormant again, but it won't rule our lives. This is better."

Makarov decided not to argue with his grandson about how he felt or what was the best course of action. Laxus and Wendy were in seriously uncharted waters, so if this was what Laxus felt was best, there was a good chance he might be right. Besides, Laxus really tried to avoid emotional attachments to all people, so having one forced on him was difficult for him.

There was no arguing that it was better for Wendy not to share that kind of attachment at her age. At her current stage in life, she needed to figure out her own life and learn who she was. Being shackled to another person was only going to muddy the waters for her. It might have been workable if the person she shared that bond with was closer to the same place in life.

Laxus turned to Makarov, ready to depart on his great unknown adventure, but he hesitated.

"Old geezer, what are you going to do now? If you've been given good health and some extra years, do you really plan on spending them doing what you've been doing for five decades? Is more of the same really fine?" he asked.

Makarov asked, "What else would I be doing?"

"I don't know. Literally anything else. Make Gildarts deal with the dumb shit. Go do something fun for once."

The old man almost immediately excused this idea, but then caught a hint of subtext. "Are you…inviting me to go traipsing all over the world with no goal in mind?"

"That sounds annoying as hell. Whatever. You can do whatever you want. I don't care."

Makarov quickly said, "Let me pack my things and divest myself of all my responsibilities. I'll be ready in an hour."

While Laxus almost immediately regretted this conversation, he also couldn't forget how he felt when he thought his grandfather was going to die. In the old healer's hut, he'd looked back on the life his grandfather had lived and knew that once he became guildmaster, Makarov dedicated his life to helping raise other wizards. He filled his guild with orphans and troubled kids and helped them reach their potential and learn to live great lives, and then even raised a kid that wasn't his to start with.

Maybe he drank and he was what he was, but Makarov had spent his life helping others. He was still an old man, and eventually, he would die. Laxus just wanted to make the most out of whatever time they had left, so that maybe they could cover all those awful memories with happy ones.

The guild was strong enough that it could stand without him, regardless of who ended up in charge.

Makarov had ulterior motives for accepting the invitation as well. Specifically, he wanted to make sure that Laxus eventually returned to Fairy Tail. If Laxus could make the argument it was good for him to be gone at that specific moment in time, it made no sense that it was good for him to stay away forever.

Long-term, Makarov wanted to see Laxus grow old as a Fairy Tail member. The guild was the only real family either of them had, and while everyone needed a break from family sometimes, they also needed to be near them at other times.

He visited Gildarts in person, but wrote a letter for everyone else, because he couldn't stand the idea of having to face everyone's tears. They'd been under his leadership for so long, and he'd been a surrogate father to many. It was time for someone else to begin their own journey as leader.

For the longest time, he'd through that person might be Laxus.

And maybe eventually, it still would be.

If it was Gildarts for a season, then Erza, or Mirajane, or even Natsu, everything would be fine. If Laxus never became guildmaster, that was fine too; Makarov believed his grandon's desire to take that role had faded into nothing over time as his grandson learned to value his friends more.

So they set out on an adventure to find a place neither of them knew, in a great big world filled with magic and mysteries.

A few hours later when Wendy made it to the guild, she found out Laxus was gone, which she expected. The real shock was that he'd taken Makarov with him, and to everyone else, that didn't make a lot of sense because of how they acted toward each other. She knew the love the between them was powerful and found it beautiful in its own strange way.

Gildarts had nearly no warning, but he decided to roll with the guildmaster role this time instead of immediately quitting like the first time Makarov tried to make him guildmaster.

The conclusion of Ivan Dreyar's story was enough to make him pay more respect to the fact that family was a gift and needed to be cherished more. Laxus and Makarov had each other, but they'd also had Ivan, an adversarial force of the worst kind that twisted and turned them every way until Laxus finally removed him from the realm of the living.

As annoying as it was, Gildarts was secretly glad they'd gone together, because he knew they'd probably have a lot of fun going on adventures, drinking, fighting, yelling obscenities at strangers, and unraveling mysteries of the magic world. After the hell they'd gone through because of Ivan, happiness was deserved. He hoped Makarov enjoyed his time and Laxus figured out what to do with himself outside of magic.

Wendy on the other hand felt like she'd hurt the guild. If no one blamed her, it was only because they didn't know how much trouble had been stirred up.

Even worse, in the days that followed, the Magic Council came looking for Laxus when Ivan's body turned up, but he was long gone. The guildmembers found out he'd killed his own father, although no one was able to prove it wasn't self-defense. At least, that's what someone wrote in a file when the matter was dropped, and the file was sent somewhere to be forgotten.

Jura, the most powerful member of the Magic Council, definitely put his finger on the scale for Laxus' sake, because it was obvious that Laxus hunted his father down and beat him into the netherworld in a fit of rage. Wendy told him in private that Ivan had tried to kill her, and that event precipitated the execution, and he quietly closed the investigation, and everyone went on.

Wendy went on too, with the Thunder Legion, into her own future. She kept her secrets: five vials of Laxus' blood and the ability to use ice dragonslayer magic.

**-Reviews Welcome!-**

Lustwell, thank you so much for reviewing. I've had this story in my head for a while, and I was like I just need to get it out of there and put it into real words.


	5. Caela

Invel Yura returned to Magnolia five years later.

He came powerful, and he came ready, packed with remedies designed to disable the guild's aces. Fate had been kind and the guild had undergone an evolution of sorts:

Erza left to start a guild with old comrades, Gajeel died in a battle some time before, Laxus and Makarov had willingly left, and Gildarts' massive injuries were beginning to catch up with him. On the other hand, there were several who had stepped up from their previous level: a celestial spirit wizard who controlled all twelve gold keys after a tragedy in another guild and two-year search, Gray, who had risen to the respectable status of 'guild monster' like his rival, Natsu, and Wendy, who was generally believed to be around their level somewhere.

According to rumors, she'd basically been in dragonforce form for several years. There were whispers, but no one knew if that was on purpose or if she simply couldn't get out.

Wendy set out with the Thunder Legion and flew threw the East Forest in search of the intruder whose scattered forces were wreaking havoc all over the town.

Their devotion to Wendy was different than what they'd felt toward Laxus. The original Thunder Legion had grown up together, from a group of awkward kids into the guild's most organized, elite team. Wendy they had helped raise, seeing her from a difficult period in her life to where she was now.

While Wendy had dreams of being a curvy girl like the other beauties in the guild, fate had other plans. She was quite tall for a woman, with long legs, and small breasts, a small butt, and a weirdly wiry body that was possibly a little leaner and more muscular than people expected from a woman her age.

But being tall was an incredible advantage, and she was strong.

The Thunder Legion came to a place in the forest where everything had been turned to ice. Trees, the animals perched in them, and even the ground.

"Stay here," she told them, "Freed, can you set up runes to contain this area? Make sure Invel can't leave. We have to keep him out of town. It's bad enough he has all his henchman there already."

Wendy walked alone on the ice, deeper into the woods to a little frozen field where Invel was standing over a frozen Natsu with a club, about to shatter his body. Wendy broke the enchantment by placing several of hers on Natsu in rapid succession.

"Arms, Armor, Vernier!"

Natsu broke free and shook his head, feeling a little disoriented.

"Ah, another challenger?"

Natsu said, "Be careful, this guy is crazy powerful now."

She asked, "What do you want?"

Invel said, "The same thing everyone wants. More power. You have something I want very badly. I'm sure it's in your guild."

"We wouldn't give you anything we have. You're probably stupid for asking," Natsu quickly answered.

Invel said, "You have an ice dragonslayer lacrima, don't you?"

"Eh?" Natsu asked.

"Four years ago, this guild killed an ice dragon. Something happened to the lacrima. It's not in Gray…I thought that was the source of his growing power. No one else in your guild uses ice. Therefore, it must be stored somewhere. Give it to me, or I will freeze everyone in this town. The wizards might be able to survive, but no one else will," he commanded.

Natsu looked over at Wendy, seemingly asking a question since he knew that only she and Laxus had been around for that.

Wendy answered, "You've got it all wrong. We didn't give the lacrima to the guild, and they don't have it now."

"Then where is it?"

"That was a hard time in my life. A lot of things changed. I lost my best friend in the world to that ice dragon, so that battle meant more to me than that stupid little lacrima," she said.

Wendy glared at him, and he blasted her with an intense wave of cold magic that was intended to freeze her in place. Instead Natsu heard the characteristic _gulp_ sound a dragonslayers' body made when ingesting magic, and he watched her suck up the cold magic.

Invel knew what he was watching, and he didn't understand how something like that had ended up in the body of someone who was already a dragonslayer. The guild could have put it in Gray, and turned him into something like a god, or into another person and created another dragonslayer.

Wendy said simply. "Laxus gave it to me and I ate it. There's not anything else to it besides that."

That meant that between Natsu, who could wield lightning in addition to fire, and Wendy, who could use the ice and sky magics, there were four elements against Invel's ice. The fact that one of those elements was also ice was even more problematic. Dragon magics were naturally more powerful than human ones were, so she could neutralize most of his spells.

"Didn't you go to prison or something?" Natsu asked.

Invel said, "I served my time. Imagine my surprise when I got out and learned there was ice dragonslayer magic in the world."

Not being able to neutralize Natsu was a problem in and of itself for Invel. Wendy was equally more dangerous, proven when the wind started to blow so cold and hard that he was almost knocked off his feet.

He tried to attack, and she swept his cold magic up into her vortex of sky magic and created an opening for Natsu, who hit him hard with an intense blast of fire magic.

With her ice magic, he couldn't attack because she only manipulated his ice and threw it around with her winds, relenting only long enough to let Natsu hit him from behind or to throw him in the air and then smash him into the ground.

They'd just about finished pummeling him when soldiers from the Magic Council came to get him. And once the odds and ends had been taken care of, she and the fire dragonslayer headed back toward the guild.

Natsu said, "You're an ice wizard now too? Since a long time ago, apparently…You got any more secrets?"

"Believe it or not, I do. But I can't tell you what they are, or they wouldn't be secrets anymore," she answered. "Laxus told me to keep that a secret as long as I could."

"I almost forgot you were running around with that guy for a while on jobs right before he left. I wonder where he is now. Or Master for that matter."

Wendy said, "I wish they'd come back."

Natsu nodded. "I want to fight that lightning bastard. If he never comes back, how am I going to do it?"

"Is that it?"

"I mean, it's not like we miss his great personality."

She laughed. "He wasn't that bad. Well, maybe a little."

"That's good guy Laxus. You missed so much before that. He was a real pain. Still, he was there when it mattered. That was a dark time, back then. There were so many battles where we had to put everything on the line and believe in ourselves against enemies that were so huge," he said.

"Some long nights…I remember watching the sun rise after the battle with Alvarez and thinking it was a miracle that I was able to see it."

Natsu nodded. "Speaking of Laxus, in all this time, have you ever picked up his scent anywhere?"

"No."

"I don't think he's on this continent. He has a strong presence, and I think if he was anywhere, we might have run into him or at least smelled him at some point."

Wendy said, "I agree with that. Subtlety wasn't exactly his thing. We would have heard something about someone that powerful if they were anywhere around."

A third member joined their group as they came to a fork in the path.

"I heard you're trying to steal my thunder, Wendy. Ice is kind of my thing," Gray said.

Natsu said, "You can't own ice, did you freeze your brain or something!"

"No one asked you, Flame Brain!"

Wendy listened to the familiar chorus of their rivalry, accented by occasional headbutts and recycled insults, and decided she couldn't imagine being anywhere else. These were the sounds of Fairy Tail, after all.

Back at the guild, members were licking their wounds, sharing information, and celebrating another victory on home soil by an enemy associated with Alvarez. Gildarts, still the guildmaster, was left wondering if these occurrences were leading up to another conflict with the nation, which had attempted to destroy Fairy Tail once in the past. Now there was very little the guild had to offer without Fairy Heart, but each individual incident had been uniquely motivated: one wanted revenge, one wanted a dragon lacrima, and one wanted to break the guild apart from the inside.

The panic over the attack had frightened the guild children born over the past few years, and they were gathered around Gildarts, still afraid they'd been close enough to the action to feel the earth shake.

A pink-haired girl rocketed into Natsu's arms to soak in her father's reassurances while Lucy sat at a table holding a compress on a black eye.

"Mama got a shiner?"

"Yea!"

"Natsu? Shut up," Lucy growled.

Wendy smiled as she headed upstairs to a familiar table, where the Thunder Legion was waiting.

"Spectacular as always," Freed said.

She answered, "If it weren't for your runes, he wouldn't have been captured. I'm always grateful for you all."

Bixlow said, "We've been seeing too many people from damn Alvarez lately."

"It's a problem. I don't know if it's one we can deal with. The Spriggan Twelve still exist, and the ones who died or went to prison have just been replaced with other super-powerful wizards. It might be bad for us to openly confront them," Evergreen said.

"I think the real question is if King Ajeel harbors and hostility toward us. It's possible he doesn't know about these incidents until after they occur. This doesn't seem like state-sanctioned violence," Freed added.

Wendy wasn't sure what to think about any of it. All she knew was that this was the third time recently that they'd had someone attack Magnolia. After a few years of peace, there were rumblings and rumors that the massive vacuum created by the destruction of the Balam Alliance had become occupied by someone unknown dark force. All she knew was that dark guilds who became powerful enough didn't stay in the dark. They eventually came for the light, and that usually meant Fairy Tail.

Fairy Tail was down two dragonslayers, with Laxus absent and Gajeel deceased. Sabretooth was also permanently down one dragonslayer.

Whatever happened, they'd stick together, and they'd win. It just seemed like the massive advantages once shared by the allied guilds were starting to fade.

Wendy considered going to go look for Laxus, but there was no telling where he was. As far away as he travelled from her, their connection persisted, so occasionally there were clues. Most recently, she kept feeling warm even though it was late fall, so he was possibly in the southern hemisphere.

Even if she could find him, she wasn't sure that he'd come back. Then she also worried about exposing Fairy Tail to further danger if she left, since most of the heavy-lifting done in big battles boiled was completed by Natsu, Gray, Lucy, Mirajane, and herself. Cana was close. There were a lot of wizards sitting right at second-tier, but against a truly powerful opponent, sometimes it wasn't enough.

It seemed stupid to her that their link allowed her to know he was hot all the time, wherever he was, but not to not actually send him a signal. That's the only way the link would have been useful at the great distance it was currently stretched to.

As the day dragged on into night, she decided to head back to the dorm and try to get some rest. Being stressed out about what might happen wasn't useful at all and going on a search to find someone who willingly left the guild and was probably persistently wandering was just stupid anyway.

Along the way, she heard footsteps, and picked up a scent.

"Wendy, wait up!" Romeo called.

He had a huge bruise on his cheek from the day's fight, and after he caught up to her, she reached out and healed it. "I didn't realize you were hurt too."

"Who cares about that? I have something important to ask you. We've known each other for a long time, right?"

Wendy felt an inward cringe, as this conversation had been coming for quite some time. "Right."

Romeo said, "My dad says I should just be brave and tell you how I feel. Well, you're one of my best friends. We've grown up together in the guild. Gone on jobs, fought in battles. Stuff that matters. I just feel a certain way about you. Today, when we were fighting, I realized I just wanted an opportunity to tell you. That I like you. A lot."

The dragonslayer stopped walking and took a deep breath. "Romeo, your friendship means a lot to me. All the memories we've had together in the guild for these years are precious to me. But I don't have romantic feelings toward you."

The disappointment on his face was deep, and he asked, "Do you think your mind will change?"

Wendy said, "I don't really have feelings like that to anyone. I can't go into details, but I'm not able to feel like that, not really. My mind won't let me think about it. I'm sorry."

"What?"

"I just can't. That's all. Let's just be friends, okay?"

"I'm going to win you over, somehow. I promise!"

XXX

"Is this the place?"

"No."

Laxus shook his head as he and his grandfather stood on the beach of a tiny island on the other side of the world. They'd spent years looking for a location he saw in dreams, with nearly no clues to go on. Their path had been long, and quite an adventure.

Currently, they were members of an adventurer's guild who didn't know who they were and didn't know they could use magic. Their work took them to all sorts of remote places, and from the vegetation in Laxus' dreams, he believed they were getting much closer to the island he dreamed about.

Makarov didn't mind the journey. They'd seen the world's largest canyon, climbed the tallest mountain, and seen endless wonders.

Laxus was incredibly preoccupied with finding this place, maybe because it gave him something to focus on. There was never any clue about what they were looking for exactly, only a suspicion from Laxus that Fulguros the dragon's influence was driving him to find that place for some reason.

Laxus said, "The island I see has a huge tree. It reminded me of Tenrou Tree."

Makarov sat down on a rock and unfolded his map. "I've never seen another tree like that anywhere in my life. Considering the enchantment and power it had, maybe that's relevant."

The island chain they were investigating was characterized by lush coral reefs and shallow, still waters, so they'd been going from one to another in a small motorboat.

Laxus cracked open a beer from the cooler in their boat and sat in the sand. "This better be worth it. I'm gonna be pissed if this guy has been bothering the crap out of me for something stupid. I have a hard time thinking about what would be worth all this trouble. I'm guessing it's something powerful. Maybe a spell or lacrima or some dragon treasure trove."

Makarov said, "Maybe it's vengeance. The others gained their powers from willing dragons. Have you considered maybe Fulguros is displeased with you for how you obtained his powers? It could be death he's leading you too."

"If he has enough influence in my body to control my dreams, he probably had enough to kill me back when Ivan first put the lacrima in me. Leading me around for no reason seems like a waste of everyone's time."

"Even if it turns out to be a waste of time, the tropics are a sight to behold, even if there's nothing to find here," the old man said.

"Maybe. Kind of miss the smell of the East Forest."

"What are you talking about? Forests smell like rotting leaves, but this island air!" Makarov argued.

They got back into the boat after exploring the little island, which only had wildlife and the ruins of a long-abandoned fishing village.

Makarov looked through binoculars as they headed to the next island, ignoring how his grandson hung over the edge of the boat. Traveling the world meant lots of transportation, and that meant their in-betweens were a bit rough for Laxus.

Then, he saw on the horizon, a huge tree.

"Laxus!"

Laxus didn't need binoculars because he was a young dragonslayer and not a very old human. He looked up, the world still spinning, and exclaimed, "I think that's it…finally, we've found this damn place?"

They changed direction and headed to the island with the big tree as storm clouds started to gather, arriving at the shore just as the wind started to whip the waves.

Laxus dragged the boat far up the beach to make sure it didn't get battered on the rocks and then set up a tent safely inland.

From there, he and Makarov started to climb up a rocky path. The tree at the center of the island was identical to Tenrou, both in appearance and the fact that it emanated magic power. While Tenrou Tree only helped Fairy Tail members, this one seemed to just secrete ethernano indiscriminately in all directions to all creatures.

When they made it up to a plateau, the reason Laxus had been dreaming of the island seemed clear:

There was a huge dragon skeleton on the island. Laxus knew by some previously unknown instinct that it was the body his magic had come from. His magic had come from here, after a fight on this island, where the Lightning Dragon King was slain by an unknown dragonslayer.

Makarov said, "Is _this_ what you've been drawn to? A pile of dead bones? Your memories…they're merely the last memories of Fulguros?"

"Tell me that's not it…" Laxus growled, kicking the skull.

Standing in the rain in front of a gigantic dead dragon, Laxus was worried that he'd spent all his time for nothing. The weird part about all of it was that the visions of this place had started after the incident with Wendy and the ice dragon. It didn't make sense for it to have started then if he was just dreaming about whatever the dragon saw last.

"Actually, I sense some kind of power on this island, and it's not the tree, close to it, but a different type of magic," Makarov said.

They continued in the pouring rain, to where the massive roots created a shelter under the trunk of the huge tree. There under the tree in a cave-like structure made from the roots, there was a huge, opaque lacrima in the shape of a cube. It was yellowish, sealed away with lightning dragon magic and hidden under the tree where it could continue absorb magic to sustain its seal forever.

Laxus said, "This is the reason he wanted me to come here."

"There's some kind of extremely powerful magic sealed inside of that."

"I can feel it, old geezer. I have more senses than you, not the other way around."

"Enough of that attitude, after I've spent all this time looking for it with you!"

Laxus was sure it was some sort of magic power source that the dragon had hidden on the island before dying. So he reached out, put his hands on it, and dispelled it using his lightning magic.

What fell in his hands wasn't a lacrima, or a weapon, a spell or some tool of destruction.

It was a large, fuzzy white orb with little feathery ruffles around it that reminded him of the scaly feathers Wendy got on her hands and feet during dragonforce.

Laxus stared down at it.

A ghostly apparition of a golden dragon with electrified scales appeared in the cave.

Laxus said, "Fulguros, dragon who annoys me while I am asleep?"

"Laxus, impudent, vulgar boy who uses my powers without permission, and Makarov, the grandfather."

"You know us?" Laxus asked.

Fulguros answered, "The remnant of my power has been inside of you for most of your life."

"Whatever. Did you want me to come here?"

"Yes."

Laxus held up the orb. "For this?"

"Yes."

"What the fuck is it?"

Fulguros' ghost asked, "It's an egg."

"A dragon egg?!" Makarov asked.

Laxus' lip curled into a snarl. "You sent me all this way for _this_? What a joke."

"Is the love of a father for his child merely a joke to you?" he said, lowering his huge head.

This comment was precisely pointed at Laxus' heart, and the dragonslayer growled, "Why is this here?"

Fulguros said, "In our time, ethernano became dangerously low. It became impossible for new dragons to hatch. Acnologia and other dragonslayers destroyed nests; killing dragons was one side of why we disappeared. The other was that no new ones were able to hatch or grow. This egg is the only survivor of a next of six. The rest of our little ones were killed before even taking a breath by a dragonslayer.

"I found this place and sealed it away. The tree had enough magic to keep the egg alive. The intent was to hatch it in better days. But I died here that day, and Grandine didn't know any of the eggs had survived, or that I'd successfully hidden this one. It was sealed with my magic, so there was never any hope the egg could hatch. It would be trapped her forever had you not come along, unless some malevolent force found the lacrima and knew of a way to extract the power from it."

Makarov could generally understand what the ask here was, and he didn't think Laxus was slow about it either.

Laxus said, "Your plan was for me to find and unseal it so it can hatch."

"Yes."

The dragonslayer said, "This really is the most fucking stupid thing I've ever heard in my life. I'm not going to hatch a dragon. I hate dragons. Everyone in this era hates dragons. The human world would have a major problem with something like this."

Makarov added, "I understand the situation, but the era of dragons is over."

"Is it? Are the real kings of this world not the ones who carry dragon magic inside of them?" Fulguros asked. "Dragon magic rules this earth, just from inside of humans now."

There was merit to saying dragons weren't over when dragonslayers still sat at the top of the magic world. The fact they'd cannibalized their original magical source into nothing didn't mean dragon magic wasn't still around.

Fulguros said, "The egg is unsealed now. It will hatch in this era. Probably soon. What will you do?"

"Leave it right where I found it," Laxus answered.

"The hatchling will starve to death. Are you cruel? If something like that happens, I'll use the last energy I have left to tear your body apart," Fulguros threatened, "If you truly believe a dragon can't exist in your era, destroy the egg."

Laxus asked, "Will you kill me if I do?"

"No. You have my word. Know that dragons are intelligent creatures, and the little one in that egg knows my magic. Her only memory will be being killed by her own father. Are you so cruel that you would let a child's only memory be that painful?"

Laxus said, "Don't try to screw with my feelings. I'm not a piece of shit, I'm just not going to bring a dragon into this world. Call me cruel, call me evil, call me whatever you want. I'm not going to do this. It's insane, dangerous, and stupid."

"Then break the egg. Your magic can do it. I don't want her to suffer in this world, if that's all that the world of humans has to offer. However," the ghost said, a ghastly claw pointed at him. "Grandine and I lost our lives trying to save humanity. We turned on our own kind, killed the ones that had been our friends, our family, our allies, because we chose to have mercy on humankind. They were weak, pathetic, and small, and we were great. We lent them our great strength to help them build their own future and they used it to destroy ours."

Laxus looked down at the egg, and then over at his grandfather, and then finally back up at Fulguros.

What Fulguros said was definitely true; dragons disappeared in part because they massacred each other to protect humans and also because the humans they tried to help chose to murder them. It was a terrible and dark chapter of human history, and it was also unapologetically evil. The consequences had been high: dragons were left functionally extinct and humans very nearly lost their own battle for survival to Acnologia.

Fulguros said, "What are you waiting for?"

Laxus barked, "Shut the fuck up and let me think!"

Makarov asked, "Are you considering not destroying the egg? What in the world would we do with a dragon? The authorities would come for it."

Fulguros answered, "Dragons can assume humanlike forms. It wouldn't be long before you could cast a spell like that. A year."

Makarov knew his grandson was not known for being even slightly merciful, but he also wasn't cruel. What existed inside of the egg was a baby, even if it was a baby dragon. He could see Laxus' resolve waver.

Laxus said, "What do I have to do outside of just letting it hatch?"

"Normal things to take care of a newborn."

"I don't know anything about babies. I find them upsetting and gross," he said.

Fulguros said, "Take her to Wendy then. She has the mother's magic in her. She'll know what to do."

Laxus answered, "That sounds like a really crappy thing to do. The last time I was around her I wrecked her life. Showing up with a kid I don't want to raise seems somehow much worse."

Makarov asked, "Are you serious, Laxus?"

His grandson said, "Obviously, this is a terrible idea and I hate it. Also, feeling some weird vibes that I think come from the fact that I'm connected to this guy and this guy made this egg."

Fulguros leaned in. "Are you experiencing paternal feelings?"

"That would be a great exaggeration. Don't mistake my reluctance to kill a baby anything with any kind of kindness. I'm just not that kind of asshole," Laxus defensively answered.

Makarov immediately suspected maybe Laxus did feel a strong connection to the egg, both because he hadn't smashed it and because he was holding it carefully. Laxus did very few things with any degree of care or gentleness, so it was worth noting.

Fulguros said, "I'll leave the spell you'll need to cast to force her into human-like form in you. You'll know it when its time. As far as your reward goes…"

"There's a reward? I was under the impression gaining a child was usually just a straight loss," Laxus complained.

"Go back to your country. Take the teeth out of my skull. You're going to need them for something that's about to happen."

Makarov asked, "Is Fairy Tail in some kind of trouble?"

"They will be soon. By spring. If you don't return, the guild may not survive, and as goes Fairy Tail, so goes Ishgar, isn't that right? But, I've run out of time…" the dragon said as he started to fade.

The last thing he uttered before vanishing completely was, "Her name is Caela."

The cave suddenly became dark and quiet again, and Laxus let out a long sigh.

Makarov said, "Are you aware that you've just agreed to raise a child?"

"Did _you_ want to smash the egg?"

"Fair enough…I'll admit that I didn't want you to do it."

Laxus rolled his eyes. "Let's go back home. For one thing, that threat bothers me. And second, what the fuck are going to do with a baby dragon if we're on the move? I figure I only have to do so much, and once it can look human and hang around the guild, I'll be done. She'll be community property, like Romeo."

"Romeo has a father, Laxus!"

"Really? Actually, he's probably a kid anymore. We've been gone for a while."

Makarov answered, "Wendy has grown up too. She's what, nineteen now?"

"Something like that."

They went down to their little tent and settled in for the night, with the fuzzy, round egg between them as rain steadily poured.

Laxus was sound asleep when he heard a tearing sound.

He sat up and watched a white claw push out of the egg.

"Gramps?"

Makarov opened his eyes. "What is it?"

A tail poked through the shell slightly before retreating in.

"She really was just waiting for an opportunity to enter this world. I wonder if we should help her get out," the old wizard said.

"I think we're supposed to let her break out on her own."

It was a long and slow process, taking hours, yet neither wizard took their eyes off the little egg as its occupant fought to be free.

Makarov said, "This is probably the last dragon that will ever be born into our world. It seems like an honor to witness such an event."

Little bursts of magic started to come from the egg, and when one claw emerged again, it was charged in power.

The little dragon finally made a big enough tear in the soft, fuzzy shell to squeeze out of, and as soon as she was free, let out a tiny little squeak of a roar.

The dragon's appearance wasn't even vaguely reptilian like they had expected and was instead white and incredibly fluffy. It wasn't very large at all, and most of the space it occupied was silky white fuzz.

"This dragon looks like a very fancy cat," Laxus commented.

Makarov nodded. "How peculiar…yet incredible. Welcome to our world, Caela."

The dragon couldn't stand very well and kept trying to roar, causing little puffs of sky magic.

"I wonder if she wants something."

"She just went through a demanding ordeal. She's probably hungry," Makarov answered.

Laxus reached for their bag and untied it, offering various items. Dragons would in theory be carnivores, but the baby dragon thumbed her nose at canned meat, some cheese, and finally accepted a banana, but only as long as he held it for her while she ate.

As soon as the little dragon finished eating, she laid down and went to sleep, so they did as well, although Laxus awoke to find her sleeping on his chest and his shirt shredded from her climbing up in the middle of the night.

"What a pain…"

When he tried to stand up, she climbed onto his shoulder and perched there. Now that Caela had recovered some of her energy, she seemed happy to sit there and capable of balancing herself so she didn't fall as they packed up the tent.

Laxus said, "I'm going to go get the teeth before we forget."

He went up the trail back to the dragon skeleton and started cracking the teeth out of it when the little dragon sniffed at the air and let out a cry. She jumped onto the skull, landing roughly, and laid down.

"Don't tell me you have an idea about who this is."

The little dragon bit and scratched him as well as she could when he finished collecting the teeth and tried to pick her back up again.

Laxus knelt. "Let's go. You can't stay here."

He picked the dragon up by force, and after some additional biting and scratching, managed to get her to return to her perch on his shoulder, although it was obvious that she was still upset.

"How did your face get scratched?" Makarov asked.

"Don't talk to me. I'm pissed."

The dragon bit down on his ear, for no apparent reason, and he narrowed his eyes as she pulled on it.

Makarov said, "I'm amused by this."

"Why wouldn't you be? It involves me suffering discomfort which is the basis of everything you find funny," he bit back as he shoved the boat into the water. "Now I get to be motion sick. How cool is that?"

They set off for the nearest major port, where their adventurer's guild was. There was some question about whether the baby dragon would also experience motion sickness, but the answer to that question came in the form of foamy banana vomit on Laxus shoulder. She lost the ability to stay perched and sat in the bottom of the boat while Laxus hung over the side.

As soon as they got off, they prepared to part ways so Makarov could swing by the adventurer's guild and Laxus could book passage on a boat.

Laxus had no worries about someone mistaking the ball of fluff for a dragon because the idea was just so absurd. While they waited, he bought her a fruit cup from a vendor and sat on a bench and let her try the different kinds of fruit.

By the time Makarov caught up to them, Laxus was still on the bench and the dragon had gone back to chewing on his ear.

"I'm amazed by your patience."

"What do you want me to do? Yell? Beat her up? She'll scratch me up if I piss her off so whatever."

Makarov said, "I really do need you to have some real, live human babies before I die."

"I really do need you to mind your own business and leave me alone."

His grandfather stroked the dragon's silky fuzz and said, "It's a beautiful story, if you think about it. A father tries to help his child be born into a time where she can survive but loses his life. It's an inconvenience for you, but this life was loved by her parents, and she waited at least four hundred years just to be born. That her father used the last of his energy to ask you to set her free so she can have a life is quite a powerful realization."

"Whatever. You want to be a chew toy for a while?"

"This may be the closest thing I ever have to a great-grandchild, so I'll take her."

With some effort and some additional biting and scratching, he managed to pull her off his shoulder and held her out to Makarov who took the baby dragon into his arms like an actual human baby.

"Aren't you precious? Look at this furry little belly," he said.

"Why isn't she attacking you?"

"Because I'm not you. All babies need love."

When the baby dragon started making a noise not entirely unlike purring, Laxus asked, "Wendy said Grandine had a certain softness about her, but she didn't mention Grandine was basically an enormous cat."

A bell rang, and they stood up to board the ship.

The passed the baby dragon through customs as an exotic cat at every stop on the way back until they made it all the way back to Fiore.

They were on the last train back to Magnolia when Laxus felt Wendy's presence. Fulguros told them to return, and so he was sure they needed to do so, but he wondered if it was the right thing for her. In his mind, he still thought of her as being a kid, even though he knew she wasn't anymore.

He'd missed his home, he'd missed his guild, and he was anxious to see everyone again and go back to the life he'd had.

A part of him basically wanted to be upset that the years he'd spent looking for Fulguros' treasure ended the way they did, but he really wasn't. The search was fun, and as incredibly weird as it Caela was, the baby dragon was nothing if not amusing, being a sweet darling for his grandfather and a playful terror to him.

It was hard to imagine that she'd eventually be bigger than a house and have enough magic power to obliterate entire cities.

When they got off the train, the dragonslayer and the baby dragon readjusted to life without movement, and they got off to find Wendy standing on the platform, having long sensed Laxus' arrival.

"Welcome home, Master and Laxus. It's been a while."

Laxus was surprised to find Wendy had grown as much as she did, since she was probably now the tallest woman in the guild. Her hair was still pink, but she'd grown it out a bit and it was in a ponytail. Her eyes were a deep shade of magenta, which made her look actually quite a bit like Porlyusica.

"Suddenly, a gigantic Wendy appears?!"

She laughed shyly. "You're well? You have a nice tan."

"I just came from the Greater Tropics. Lots of little deserted islands everywhere. It's sunny and warm all the time," he answered.

Makarov caught up to them. "Wendy, you've grown into quite a lovely young woman. Are things well?"

She nodded. "Mostly. The guild has had some dust-ups lately. I was thinking of going to try and find you two."

She suddenly paled as she looked down in Laxus arms. "Laxus, is that…? That's a baby dragon. Like Grandine. It looks just like Grandine, just so small. Where in the world did you get a baby dragon? Why do you have it?"

"Fulguros kept showing me a place, and I literally spent years looking for it, thinking it was some huge dragon treasure. Maybe a weapon or some power source or something. It was actually an egg he sealed away on some random island to keep it safe from Acnologia. I unsealed it before I knew what it was. I feel a little tricked."

Wendy took a step forward. "Can I touch her?"

"Sure. Her name is Caela, she only eats fruit, and her favorite activities are chewing on me for no reason and generally being a pain in the ass."

"Can she talk? I wonder if they're born being able to talk or if they have to learn."

"On her third day, she said a word and that's been the only one so far. I think her unhealthy obsession with bananas is the only thing she's interested at this point anyway. She just literally doesn't give a shit about anything else except eating bananas and annoying me," he said.

The little dragon squeaked, "Nanner!"

He reached into his coat for a banana and used his mouth to break off the stem.

Wendy said, "Laxus, why are you talking like that and then also taking good care of her and giving her what she wants?"

Makarov interrupted. "Because he hasn't changed at all. He's still like _that_."

"Oh, I'd almost forgotten," she answered.

She followed them back to the Dreyar house, which was covered in layers of dust.

Makarov asked, "So Wendy, what's happened?"

"The guild is different. Erza left. To go be with Jellal and some the others that had known them when they were kids. They're an allied guild now. Gajeel…he died. We still don't know really what happened. He was out on a job and he didn't come back, and Natsu went after him and found remains. Their son doesn't really remember him at all."

"How terrible…I had no idea," Makarov said.

Wendy quickly pivoted. "There are lots of little kids that were born since you left. Like…lots. Evergreen and Elfman have twin boys. Freed and Mirajane have a daughter. Natsu and Lucy have a daughter. Gray and Juvia are expecting now."

"Geeze, is it something in the water?" Laxus asked.

"I don't think that's how babies work," Wendy said, watching the little dragon as she sat on Laxus' shoulder and played with his hair, biting lightly into his skull occasionally. "Is that what she does?"

"All day long."

Wendy said, "Can I try holding her?"

"If you want. Be careful of her claws and teeth."

Wendy plopped down on the sofa next to him and picked up the baby dragon, who made no protestation and simply laid down in her lap.

"She's not a jerk to the geezer either, but he treats her like a real human baby."

Makarov said, "Babies terrorize those who fear them. It's a fact of life. Anyway, I'm heading off to bed. You two probably have a lot to talk about."

The old man disappeared quickly, and Laxus crossed his arms.

Wendy didn't stop caressing the baby dragon as they had a long, awkward stare.

"So…" she said.

"Right."

Wendy nodded. "I'm glad we had this talk."

"Same."

She gently moved the baby dragon back to him, where she immediately resumed torturing his hair. "See you around."

**-Reviews Welcome-**


	6. Of Ducks and Dragons

A week back, and Laxus found himself filled with more questions than he wanted to be.

While he was gone, he had few reasons to be on-guard most of the time, and island-hopping from one-tropical destination to the next with his grandfather allowed them to replace all the bad memories they'd had with ones that were more fun.

They were expelled from no less than seven different countries for shenanigans that involved the lovely combination of alcohol, magic, and violence that would have been totally unprovoked if they weren't talented shit-talkers. They fought strange monsters in stranger places, trained together, ate weird food, and they didn't talk about all the things that had gone wrong.

One of the things he'd missed most about their normal little house and their semi-normal little town was the huge bathtub in his bathroom. Some cultures really didn't have bath houses or anywhere to soak besides hot tubs, which always vaguely smelled like stale, hot semen, at best.

As he sank under the water, all the way to his chin, he thought about his life.

It was quite a shock to come home after being gone so long, but nothing hit as hard as finding out Gajeel had died. Laxus had never been particularly close to Gajeel and honestly found his presence genuinely miserable, but Gajeel was one of them. And even if he'd never admit it to anyone, he respected Gajeel because he'd had the courage to stop and change his life before he burned the whole world to the ground.

His own redirection came after some thoroughly scorched earth and about a hundred bridges he was sure he'd burned to ash.

Gajeel started over, and he was loyal and courageous. He did all the things good people do: found one girl, was loyal to her, married her, had a baby. Then a couple of weeks later, he went on a simple job and was found dead less than thirty miles from home.

Considering Gajeel's most potent magic power was being functionally indestructible, his death and the mystery around it were incredibly disturbing to the guild, even a couple of years later. The event obviously had had a huge impact on Levy, and the kid he'd seen running around the guild with heavy metal hair, but there were several others that had been seriously affected.

Gajeel wasn't the only one who had died over the past years, either. A few hours before Gajeel was killed on the same day, something happened near Sabretooth that ended in their celestial wizard dead, and one of their dragonslayers missing but genuinely believed to also be dead.

Since then, no other information had surfaced.

The common belief was that some group somehow managed to attack and kill two dragonslayers on the same day in mere hours and the celestial wizard had been collateral damage. Natsu, who found Gajeel's body and ended up with the horrible burden of telling Levy he had died, seemed to believe this was bullshit.

Natsu was Natsu was Natsu, so he wasn't going to sit around and talk about what he thought might have happened, but Laxus knew he had some kind of suspicion about what happened, and Natsu's instincts weren't wrong—ever.

His sensitive ears heard the telltale clickity-clack of dragon claws on the wooden floor as they passed by the door out in the hallway, then doubled back. There was sniffing under the door after that and he sighed. An anxious growl followed, and then scratching at the door.

The door itself meant very little. Laxus kept putting Caela in their guest room to sleep at night and then waking up to find her in his bed even though the doors and windows were shut and locked. The means by which she entered closed off rooms was currently unknown, although he and his grandfather had several theories that included the idea that she might be able to just walk through walls, or flatten her body almost completely so she could slither under the door. Whatever she did defied the laws of physics which was a peculiar ability for a creature with the intelligence of a human toddler.

Keeping her in the house was a serious concern, but Freed's runes didn't work on her because despite being a mere hatchling, Caela was a creature of much higher order than a human. The idea of human runes containing a majestic dragon was objectively absurd.

"Leave me alone, bath time is alone time."

It became quiet, and a cloudlike vapor started to pass under the door. Instead of escaping from the room like the condensation from his bath, it entered, and then, turned into a certain little baby dragon.

Laxus' brow rose. "You can turn yourself into a cloud? I mean, I guess it makes sense. Keeping you inside is getting to be a pain."

"Nanners?"

"There are _definitely_ not any bananas in the bathroom, and if there were, I wouldn't give you one for sneaking in. Don't look at me like that. I think you know what I'm saying at least half the time now," he answered.

The dragon jumped on the edge of the bathtub and hung with her claws, staring down into the water.

She put one toe in, and then pulled it out, before looking up at him.

"What?" he asked.

The dragon put her toe back in and then shook her foot before dipping it in further.

Laxus said, "I don't know if you want to do that. The fluffiness of a living thing usually decides how much it will like water. I'm zero percent fluff, I like water. You are maximum fluff."

The dragon tried to balance on the foot that was already wet and dip a dry one in, but she slipped and fell face-first into the bathwater, and sank to the bottom of the tub until Laxus grabbed her and held her above the water.

Caela was nearly hyperventilating, eyes bugged out as she was soaked completely, all her fluffy fur dripping as it lay flat.

She spoke a new word then. "Help! Help! Help!"

"Calm down. You're all right. It's just water. It won't kill you."

When he tried to put her on the floor, she just ran up his arm and climbed on top of his head, where she shivered and panted through her trauma while her fuzz dripped on him. Her claws dug into his head quite tightly, and once she calmed down, she did her best attempt at a dragon's roar at the water, now her enemy.

"Well, this is relaxing," he grumbled.

Laxus got out and dried off with great difficulty because the dragon was still firmly attached to his head. When he finally got her to let go, he put her on the counter and wrapped the towel around his waist.

"I don't even know why I bother with you. You're a pain," he said as he took a blow dryer from the cabinet.

The fun of the hot air, the combing, and the attention restored her spirits and by the time she'd fluffed back up, she'd recovered from her traumatic bath experience.

The dragon followed him down the hall and to the stairs, where she stopped.

"I'm not carrying you down the stairs. You're a dragon. You got up them by yourself."

"Help! Help! Help! Help! Help! Help!"

He sighed and picked her up. "I'm not understanding you being able to phase shift to go under doors and then being scared of the stairs."

He picked up Wendy's scent before he got to the bottom of the stairs and found her in the living room with his grandfather.

It wasn't surprising to see her there as she'd come by to see the baby dragon daily. Wendy always brought a plethora of chopped fruit and a ball or something for her to chew on in addition to snuggles. Wendy's appearance was the high point of the dragon's day, and she'd been quite late that day.

Caela jumped from Laxus' arms like she forgot he existed and went to claim her hugs and snuggles.

Wendy hugged her. "Were you good today, Caela?"

Laxus said, "No."

"You say that every day! You should be nice, Laxus. It's got to be hard to be a dragon in the human world. She's not a pet. She's sentient, and highly intelligent. She has feelings, and she needs to hear nice things from you," she said.

Makarov waved off her concerns. "Laxus is totally into this no matter how he acts."

Laxus narrowed his eyes. "Go to bed, geezer, you're old."

"Gladly! I've had enough of you today anyway."

The old man headed upstairs while Wendy sat on the sofa with Caela.

Laxus sat in a chair across from her as he left. "He's still himself."

"You too. Being around you two makes me feel tired for some reason," she said as she tousled the dragon's fur. "She seems extra-fluffy."

"She fell in the bathtub and I had to dry her fur."

"Did she like the water?"

"Hell no. Besides, she looked like a lizard wearing a huge, wet wig. She liked the blow dryer though," he answered.

Wendy found the peculiar misadventures of Laxus and the dragon to be oddly cute. Every day the dragon did something insane to get on his nerves. The day before, she'd escaped outside, climbed up a tree and wouldn't come down. The day before, she escaped again and was bullied by the neighborhood tom cat until Laxus saved her. Before that, a dog barked at her through the window and hurt her feelings and she required him to carry her around until she recovered from the trauma.

Laxus was patient. _So_ patient.

The dragon eventually moved to the floor to play with a thick rubber ball Wendy brought her. Sometimes she rolled it, sometimes it rolled her. She growled as she gnawed on it and tortured it with her little claws.

Wendy said, "It makes me sad that I was able to experience her mother's love, and she never will. She's only ever going to exist in the world of humans. What if she never meets anyone else like her?" she said.

"I don't like dragons, so less dragons is fine for me," he said as he reached under the coffee table to retrieve the ball for Caela.

Wendy seemed serious enough, but the slightest hint in her voice indicated she was definitely making fun of him when she answered, "I can tell how much you dislike them. You're practically boiling over with rage."

"Whatever."

He quickly reached down to keep the dragon from hitting her head as she rolled carelessly across the floor. "Anyway…"

"You hate dragons so much."

"Right. I understand you're amused at my expense, but remember I have no warm fuzzy feelings about dragons. My first interactions with them were Acnologia, Acnologia, and Acnologia. Not sure if you remember but none of those were great," he complained.

"Didn't you see the other dragons when they broke the faces?"

Laxus shrugged. "I was basically almost dead during everything that happened with Tartaros. I remember puking up some blood, fighting some guy that looked like a dog, puking up some more blood, passing out, more blood, then Acnologia flying over me while I puked up blood and passed out again. Those are all of my memories—it basically feels like a fever dream. You could tell me none of it happened and I'd be willing to believe you."

Caela brought her ball to Wendy's lap and laid there with it, alternating between eating the fruit bites Wendy brought her and chewing on the ball. There was always a sweet look in the baby dragon's eyes when she was happy, a reminder of her sentience and the bonds she was forming with the humans that cared for her.

That said, she was incredibly destructive and within the hour, the solid red rubber ball was in ribbons, and she was full, happy, and sleepy, the preferred default state of any baby.

Wendy went home, and Laxus put the baby dragon on the bed in the guest room, dressed for bed, and was half asleep when he heard the dragon climb up so she could find some awkward place to snuggle in. He sighed, waited for her to settle in, and went to sleep.

XXX

A few days later right at dawn, Wendy went for a run, a normal part of her daily routine to stay in shape. The lungs of a dragonslayer were everything, so endurance running was a good way to make sure she was at her best.

She sensed a presence in the East Forest as she ran and followed it to a little pond where Makarov was levitating, his legs crossed in the air while he meditated.

She didn't want to disturb his concentration, but when she turned to leave, she heard his feet touch the ground.

"Good morning!"

"Master, sorry for disturbing you. I…"

Wendy saw the dragon peeking out from behind a tree as she tried to catch her breath.

Makarov said, "She keeps trying to sneak outside. I figure she needed some time in the wild."

"Is she hiding?"

"She finds the ducks frightening, but she'll realize at some point that she has no reason to fear them. It's important to give little ones opportunities to discover their own strength. Today, maybe she'll feel a little brave because I'm here. She'll learn trust and find courage. Life is full of learning opportunities."

Caela took a nervous step from behind the tree, and an aggressive duck quacked loudly at her.

Wendy smiled at her and then at Makarov. "I think it's such a beautiful thing, you and Laxus raising a baby dragon. I was a human baby fostered by a dragon mother, so I know real love is about what's inside and not about what the outsides are like."

He sat on a tree stump and lit his pipe. "I heard you had a boyfriend while we were gone."

She nervously laughed. "Right…that happened."

Wendy sat on a big rock by him and thought about how to explain one of the most pivotal and strange parts of her life. Being told she could never be with anyone except Laxus had deeply affected how she came to think of relationships.

"So, about what Porlyusica said that night," he said.

"It's definitely true."

Makarov asked, "Speaking to you as a concerned former guildmaster and not Laxus' relative, what happened?"

Wendy asked, "You mean why did I date someone or why did we break up?"

"Both."

She said, "I just grew up so clumsy, Master. For a long time I felt like I was trapped in the body of a little girl, and then once I started growing up I just felt so uncomfortable in my own skin. I grew into a very tall person in a short amount of time, and then I was really kind of lean and not shaped much like a girl."

Makarov nodded. "Laxus had a stage like that. Picked up a lot more altitude than mass, if you know what I mean. Like a really angry beanpole. You seem to have grown into it. You're quite beautiful."

Wendy said, "Thank you, Master. I felt really awkward, and then right after you guys left, people were getting married and having babies. I mean, I obviously didn't want to get married or have a baby then, you just think about stuff. Girls have imaginations."

"It's normal. It's part of growing up—thinking about your future, and then it will be your turn to experience those things," he answered.

"After what Porlyusica said, I didn't know if I was ever going to have a turn. I guess I still don't. There were a few ways to think about that and none of them was wise or productive. The most naïve and silly parts of me wanted to believe someday maybe Laxus would come back and we'd be together. Then the part of me that's maybe a little more mature but heavier reminded me I might just always be alone. Whether he came back or not," she explained.

The former guildmaster knew there was never any way that information wasn't going to lead to confusion and frustration all around, especially at the time it was delivered.

Makarov said, "Time went by and you decided to test the theory that you couldn't be with anyone else."

She nodded. "It wasn't just that. Just being a dragonslayer, I don't know how to describe it, but it's naturally a very lonely thing sometimes. There's a lot of pressure to be strong every time its needed, but then in between those times, it feels bare. After Gajeel died, I felt…awful. For a long time. When Charle died, it was so painful, but the way it happened…it was different. The dragon didn't care if it killed her. She just got swept up in the violence. Charle mostly mattered to me.

"But someone killed Gajeel. They must have come up with a plan. It was violent, and intentional, and it was evil. He mattered to everyone. When I think about Levy crying at his funeral, or how their son won't ever remember what his father was like, it makes me so angry. I know whoever did it never thinks about how many people they hurt, or how long they'll hurt."

Makarov nodded. "Evil typically isn't about darkness…it's just purely selfish."

Wendy wiped a tear from her cheek. "I just hate how it feels, even now. Natsu and I found him, and it was…it was bad. It didn't feel real. His last moments must have been unimaginably painful, and I know that while he was dying, he probably had some hope that maybe somebody was going to be there for him."

Makarov had made the rounds, and this was a sentiment echoed through the entire guild. Everyone felt like they'd let Gajeel down. The mystery around his death exacerbated the situation significantly, because there was a secondary guilt that came from unexecuted justice.

He listened carefully to her words, and then said, "Did his death make you think about your own mortality?"

"Before, no matter what happened, everyone always lived. As dark as things got, we'd all be in the guild afterward, covered in bandages and happy once it was over. Suddenly, we could die. At any time," she said.

Makarov nodded. "We were fortunate. I've been fortunate to cheat death more times than I know, the last time with your help. Fate creates a way for me, each time. Why there couldn't have been a way for Gajeel too, I do not know."

Wendy said, "It's not fair."

"Life never is. Sometimes we are visited with evil we didn't summon, and other times, good we didn't earn."

She wiped her eyes cheeks again. "I just started thinking about my life. How I want to live and what I want to experience."

They were interrupted abruptly by the sound of Caela charging at the ducks as they wandered around on the shore, making a squeak of a roar. However, a little puff of a cloud came out of her mouth and as she bared her teeth at the ducks, they flew away.

Then she jumped in Wendy's lap and nuzzled at her.

Wendy hugged onto her and asked, "Are you trying to protect me because I'm sad? That's so precious. Aren't you the sweetest girl in the world?"

Makarov watched this little interruption and said, "Wendy, it's important to remember that even though there's evil and painful experiences, there are also wonderful experiences. People will leave you, perhaps by your choice, perhaps by theirs, perhaps because of fate. People will also join you for the same reason. There's always enough good in this world to fight for it, to fight to live in it."

Wendy gave him a sad smile. "I guess that's what I was trying to do. If we can just die at any time, I don't just want to know what the bad things are like. I remember wanting to know what some of the good things were like. Sting was older and more mature, and I felt like he knew where I was coming from. He was kind and understanding. I wished I could have felt about him the way he did about me."

"You didn't have chemistry?"

"When he held me or kissed me, I felt nothing. I see other couples and there's just this fire there, magic anyone can feel with someone else. I didn't feel any fire, and there was no magic. I wanted to. I felt nervous, and maybe excited, but there was no attraction. Sting felt like I was rejecting him personally, but it's just…what it is," she explained.

Makarov assumed it might be something like this. He'd noticed a certain dullness in Laxus when it came to women that he believed went beyond the charm on his finger.

The old wizard said, "Well, if we're on the subject of older golden-haired dragonslayers with personality problems…"

Wendy let out a laugh. "Master, I don't think we were."

"What are your thoughts?"

"On Laxus?"

He nodded.

Wendy thought for a moment and nervously answered, "I don't know what to say about him. He's a friend. He's…Laxus."

"Those are all of your thoughts, in their totality?"

She fidgeted nervously. "I'm not sure what to say, Master. I'm permanently emotionally glued to him, and I have a lot of thoughts about him. I don't think I have a reason or a right to talk about him. He's very private."

"I want to help my grandson. I don't want him to go through life alone."

Wendy knew he'd said he wanted to talk as guildmaster and not as Laxus' relative, but people couldn't be separated into layers. They were complicated, like puzzles, all the pieces interconnected with other pieces that maybe formed some other part of the picture.

The Dreyers were a big puzzle with more way too many pieces, and their picture was one of nearly inescapable darkness, blinding light, desperation, victory, frustration, emotional trauma, and indescribable power. Just like Makarov couldn't be divided into his different sides, you couldn't separate Laxus from Makarov or either of them from Ivan. Their situation was complicated and deeply tangled, and from what Gildarts had told her over the time they'd been gone, Ivan being dead was possibly the best thing that ever could have happened. Which, in and of itself, was just an incredibly sad revelation.

Makarov said, "When we were gone, I had a curious thought once. For some reason, I thought about what it would be like if the age gap between the two of you didn't exist. Or, I guess a better way of explaining it would be—what if you were children together? You actually have more in common than you know, because you've only known Laxus as he is now. When he was a little boy, he was like you were when you were younger. Sweet, shy. Tiny. He was such a kind boy it was like his heart was too big for his little body.

"He loved everyone, and he was filled with hope. He would hug Gildarts every time he came in from a job and sit for hours with older wizards and dream of when he would be a wizard too. I wonder what he would be like now if I'd truly protected him from Ivan as he was growing up. But I didn't. I kept hoping my son would grow to love his son, but he didn't."

"I can't imagine him like that," she said.

Makarov smiled. "He was a good boy. I bet you would have been really good friends."

"What happened to him?"

The old man said, "Laxus was an accident. You're grown now. You know how it goes. Ivan had no intention of raising a child, and his mother wasn't any better. He was born really early, and he wasn't supposed to last the night. I held him all night thinking he was going to slip away, but Laxus has been a stubborn brat since he entered this world. He survived, but he had some issues because of that. Ivan didn't have room for a weak, little son with asthma.

"And what was Laxus, just a little boy with more challenges than he should have had, waiting for his father to come home and spend time with him. Ivan rarely bothered, and when he did, he always reminded his son that he was ashamed to have such a pathetic boy. I should have stopped it the first time, banished Ivan and told him never to return. That was my mistake, and I kept making it, over and over and over and over. For years."

It was impossible to reconcile the Laxus she had always known with the idea that Makarov presented. Laxus was huge, powerful, unbreakable. The first time she ever saw him, he stood toe to toe with Master Hades and he was unafraid, so calm in his rage, yet every attack was carefully measured and nearly perfectly executed.

Makarov said, "Ivan came into possession of the lacrima when Laxus was about eight or nine. He took it from someone who died as a result of putting it in their body, who had taken it from someone who had suffered the same fate. I don't think anyone knows the path it took to get there, but at least two people had already died from putting the lacrima into their bodies. Ivan felt like he'd suffer the same fate but believed he could probably steal the magic if it was in another living host. His plan was to put it in Laxus and try to extract the magic. Ivan believed this would be fatal for Laxus, so he made a big show of taking his son on a trip.

"Laxus was excited his father finally wanted to do something fun with him. He packed his little backpack and spent all night up because he was so happy. Like, all his hopes would be realized, and his father was going to be a father to him."

This was somewhat nauseating to hear; a child desperate for his father's love, thinking he might finally receive it when the father only wanted to use his life completely.

Makarov added, "I believe now that Fulguros killed the former hosts, and would also have killed Ivan. He indicated to Laxus that he had the power to do so and was also incredibly angry at humanity for the fate of dragons. After meeting the ghost of that dragon, I think he probably had compassion for Laxus as a father and instead of forcing him to suffer the same fate as the others, the lacrima successfully merged with his body. There was some sort of magic discharge when it happened that injured Ivan so terribly that he never really recovered fully."

"That's terrible."

"That magic changed everything about his life. In mere days, his pathetic lungs that didn't even let him enjoy things were replaced with dragonslayer lungs. His weak body became strong. The great big world opened up, but his hope and trust were gone and that space in him filled with confusion, anger, and frustration."

Wendy knew some other parts of this story just from being around the guild, like the fact that Laxus tried to stay on Ivan's side well into his teenage years. After the fact, the lacrima incident was said to be a favor Ivan did to help his son, but Macao said Ivan hadn't ever done anything for anyone but himself in his life.

Makarov said, "Ivan spent the rest of his childhood manipulating Laxus, knowing no matter what, Laxus wanted his love. My grandson's desire to love, and the love he felt became things that led him to anguish and injury as his father manipulated him. In his mind, the idea that love causes injury became inescapable and undefeatable. It rules over him, even now."

Wendy had come far enough in life that she knew her former guildmaster and mentor was making a case for Laxus because Laxus wasn't going to make one for himself. There was an aloofness about him but gaining more insight into how he became like that was actually very sad. He was such a strong person, and she knew he had a good heart.

Makarov shifted the subject her and Laxus then, saying, "So you'll either be together or you both will be alone. Laxus may not seem like a great option. He's...awkward. Difficult. Stubborn. Nearly incapable of talking about how he feels. But there's a certain kindness inside of him, a light that no one can ever extinguish. As much grief as he has caused, he has always been worth loving."

After carefully considering the information presented, she said, "I don't think anybody wants to be alone. I believe in love. I want to be happy with someone, and I think nearly everyone has to feel that way, even someone who doesn't know how to go about getting there. The thing is, I don't really know either."

"You had a boyfriend."

"He made the first move, and…all the moves. I think the only move I made was to move on," she answered.

Makarov said, "Well, if you wait for Laxus to make a move, you'll definitely die alone, probably in a house with eighty cats. You think he's handsome, right?"

"Sure. He's a really good-looking guy. Everyone knows that."

"He _does_ get that from me," he pointed out to Wendy, who hadn't asked and found this comment at the level of typical Dreyer absurdity. "I know he thinks you're attractive."

"How?"

"You're tall and he's into long legs. You should see the crate of magazines under his bed. He definitely has a type."

Wendy frowned at him. "What kind of magazines?"

Makarov puffed a big ring of smoke out and said, "Do you really want me to tell you?"

"Master, that's probably not something you should tell anyone else."

The argument that he probably found her attractive because she looked like women in his pornography cache was irritating, at best.

Makarov said, "You know he's been wearing that ring to suppress is more base urges. I could understand when you were a kid—a teenage girl really doesn't need to know what a sexually frustrated adult man's life is like. There's no reason for it now. I think it's enabling him to be weird, and no one wants a weird grandkid."

Wendy actually found a lack of sexual interest to be one of the least weird things about Laxus, but she agreed that there was no reason for Laxus to continue wearing the charm.

"I think if you helped him understand how good it is to be loved, he'd meet you halfway. He's just not ever going to make that move. You're going to have to do it."

"I don't think so. That's not really me. Besides, what if I somehow did and he told me to get away from him? Laxus is very particular about who touches him," she said.

Makarov said, "He won't. Be brave. Just grab him and give him a big sloppy kiss. You could play it dangerous and see how far he'd slide once he gets to feeling the magic and the fire."

Their talk was abruptly interrupted with a voice asking, "What the fresh hell is this?"

Wendy nearly fell off her rock at Laxus' approach, not only because his appearance seemed nearly instantaneous, but because he was wearing nothing but a pair of pants. He wasn't even wearing shoes and his hair was uncombed and looked considerably more insane than it usually did. "Laxus? How come I didn't sense you? Why do you look like that?"

"I just woke up like two minutes ago and realized Caela was outside and thought she escaped. You both remember that if the authorities find out we are keeping a dragon, we are all going to prison, right?"

Makarov waved him off. "All the neighbors have seen her and think she's a cat or some other weird thing. You were just worried she was in trouble."

"Maybe leave a note."

"I did. It's on the refrigerator."

"Well, I didn't go upstairs because my dragon went missing."

Makarov asked, "Why did you wake up in such a bad mood?"

"Because fuck off, geezer. I used magic to get here. I have a hangover. Ughhhhh…" he covered his eyes for a second, then rubbed his head. "What in the hell were you two talking about?"

"It was a private conversation, so you don't need to worry about that," Makarov quickly answered.

Wendy was quite embarrassed, because she knew he'd heard the last part of it. She could hardly look at him, and then when she did, he was only wearing pants. All his muscles, scars, and tattoos were on full display, and after having an entire conversation about him, her eyes scanned over him in a decidedly grownup way until she got up to his face, where she was started to find he was staring at her while she ogled him.

Laxus wasn't self-conscious enough to be really bothered by this and just let her look. It was gratifying, his head hurt, and he was pretty sure he'd just stumbled on his grandfather meddling in his life. In other words, it was Tuesday, or Friday, or maybe Sunday…his head hurt so much he wasn't even sure what era he was living in.

"Geezer, did you just tell Wendy to sexually harass me?"

Makarov said, "Not everything is about you. You assume if we talk, it has to be about you. That's very immature and boorish of you."

Of course, Wendy and Makarov had been talking about Laxus in intense detail for a long time. For Makarov, basically everything _was_ about Laxus, no matter how much either of them lied about it. From a certain perspective, Laxus was an overgrown, bratty grandchild being catered to constantly by an overly fond grandparent.

Laxus narrowed his eyes. "I find that hard to believe."

"Wendy broke up with a man not that long ago. We were just talking about her ex-boyfriend."

His grandson grumpily snapped, "I'm not in the mood for games, my fucking head hurts. Wendy, don't put up with him. Talking shit about fake people or whatever."

"Ummm…Laxus, I did have a boyfriend. I mean, that's not exactly what we were talking about, but I don't want to lie."

Makarov said, "She dated the second most ill-tempered golden-haired dragon boy."

It took Laxus a second to think this one through because the sun was making him angry and his head was throbbing, but when he did, he looked over at her. "Really? That asshole?"

"Sting was actually very considerate and a very kind boyfriend," Wendy said, wading further into these terrible waters that the meddlesome grandfather had pulled her into.

Laxus crossed his arms. "I don't know why, but that really pisses me off."

"Are you jealous?" Makarov said.

"No, I just feel an uncontrollable urge to break his hands off and watch him scream while he stares at his bloody nubs. How is Sabretrash gonna come and date a Fairy Tail girl?" he asked.

His grandfather cackled. "You are jealous."

"Shut up."

When the ducks landed not far from them, Caela jumped from Wendy's lap to show off her new ferocity to Laxus, except this time, they chased her instead of being impressed with her itty bitty sky roar.

A bolt of lightning struck near them and sent the whole group to the skies in terror, and Laxus picked her up off the ground.

Makarov said, "Stop spoiling Caela. She needs to stand up for herself."

"Ducks are aggressive, and they bite," his grandson answered.

"She's a _dragon_!"

Laxus rubbed his temple. "Why don't you yell it louder? It'll help my hangover and how we're trying to not get caught."

Caela climbed up on his shoulder and started playing with his hair and chewing on his ear, feeling quite safe with her caretaker who saved her from the birds.

As he stood there, the cross expression just got a little angrier. "Were you telling Wendy to go molest that creep?"

"We were just talking about relationships," Makarov said.

"Well, fuck you, fuck Sting, and fuck ducks. You're all assholes, and you can all go straight to hell."

Contrasting who Laxus was with how Laxus acted was exhausting, and Wendy felt like Makarov had spent all this time trying to paint him in better light only to have him crash right into their conversation and act like he was. As usual, his attacks were precisely directed; he didn't sweep Wendy up in his list of complaints and had never used his vulgar insults on her.

Wendy sighed. "Laxus, that vein on the side of your head looks like it's going to pop. Stroke runs in your family, after all. It's not healthy to be angry, you know."

"I'm not angry. I just need coffee and for that guy to stop telling you to molest losers from other guilds. Ripoff blond dragonslayer is going to get his skinny ass beaten until he can't walk if he comes around here with that nonsense. Fairy Tail girls got better things to do than waste time on Sabretrash."

He turned back to head home, and Wendy followed him after hesitating for a moment. Talking about Laxus' private matters was a violation of Laxus' shield of secrets, and he knew even if he didn't act angry towards her that he didn't like it.

Hungover, barefoot, and half-naked, Laxus was clearly not in the best sorts, but she still wanted to apologize.

"Laxus, wait!"

He turned with the dragon still sitting on his shoulder and asked, "What is it?"

"Sorry."

"For what?"

"I don't know. I was just…I guess I don't have an excuse. Your grandfather just wanted to talk to me. It really wasn't about Sting. That's all over and done with."

Laxus said, "I know what the old geezer is up to. I've been dealing with him all my life."

Wendy added, "He told me about what Ivan did to you."

She could see it in his face at first, eyes that widened, a lip that curled into a snarl, and then it flowed down his body, stiffening it as he fisted his hands at his sides. His body seemed angry, but she could feel waves of vulnerability radiate from him, like she'd just peeled a scab off.

Then, she embraced him, wrapping her arms tightly around him and resting her head on his chest.

His arms hung at his sides for a minute, and they kept hanging there.

Finally, he lightly put one hand on her back.

She kept holding him and he eventually increased his investment in the hug, pulling her in closer with both hands. When she felt his chin rest on her head, she felt the tension in his body start to ease. Even though she was sure, he'd withdraw from her at any moment, he didn't.

People weren't allowed to touch him; that was just a rule.

"You really know what your grandfather is up to?"

"If you ever tell anyone like this, I will lie like the devil himself to deny it, but he just wants to help me. Sometimes I need it."

Wendy wasn't sure how to answer him, but she knew being sincere could make him uncomfortable so she relied on a proven Dreyar conversation technique and pivoted to a cringier subject. "He told me about your magazine collection."

"…not really sure how that helps me or anyone anywhere in the world…"

"He says I might be your type."

Laxus finally let her go and took a step back, studying her. "If you want to know what I think about something, the best way to find out is probably to just ask. If I was curious about what you thought about my looks, I might ask."

"You don't know what I think."

"I understood you found me attractive when you were fourteen and it literally gave me nightmares. Not saying it was wrong or right, it's just there was a great divide between us then and if you're on the adult side, you don't want to know what the other side is doing. Now you're on my side, so it's fine," he said.

Wendy shyly asked, "So, what do you think?"

Laxus said, "On a scale of one to ten? Maybe ten thousand or something. You're still young, but I guess it's fine now since you're more mature than I am."

She wasn't going to say it, but Wendy believed she'd been more emotionally mature than he was since at least age ten.

His face was serious, but a very affectionate ball of fuzz was making an even bigger mess of his hair.

Wendy laughed, and he looked up and rolled his eyes.

He said, "The thing with Sting was real?"

She nodded.

"Disgusting, Wendy. Were there no rats here in our sewers that you had to go over there?"

"He's a good guy. I hurt him, and sometimes I feel bad. Don't be mean."

He paused for a second and asked, "That thing Porlyusica said, is it not true? If you had some other boyfriend that makes me wonder if she was wrong."

"Oh no, it's definitely true. I broke up with Sting because nothing felt the way it was supposed to. When he would kiss me, I felt nothing. Empty. It wasn't his fault."

Laxus just frowned at her. "You let that pig-faced baby kiss you?"

Wendy asked, "Did you always feel that way about Sting?"

"I've honestly never given any thought to him. Before today, he just existed. I wouldn't waste my thinking time on him. Because why?"

She wondered if he was being overly simple or overly complicated and decided it didn't matter. Apparent in his irritation was the idea that a man from another guild had touched her; his emotions were irrational if he didn't have any feelings for her and perfectly rational if he did.

The dragonslayer males shared some traits she genuinely found unattractive and irritating: they were belligerent, possessive, territorial, competitive, arrogant, craved violence without end, were nearly incapable of getting along, and treated one another like rivals. The were never closer to their primal dragon sides than when they engaged in these deplorable behaviors.

Wendy could tell just by looking at Laxus that his thoughts had focused in the part of his consciousness that was all those horrible things at once.

"Are you having a dragonslayer moment?"

"What is that?"

"Where you think thoughts that other people might find really immature."

Laxus shrugged. "I'm standing half naked in the woods with a hot girl, a baby dragon, and a hangover that could destroy worlds while I think about what it would be like if I snapped Dragonslayer Barbie's hands off."

Wendy put her hand over his mouth, which actually caused him to almost flinch in surprise. "No more bad comments about Sting. Please."

He put his hand on her wrist and moved her hand from his mouth, saying, "I know no one owns you. Who can own the wind? But I have some instincts that are telling me he touched something that belongs to me and I should cause him intense violence."

Makarov could make wonderfully passionate arguments about his grandson, but the actual grandson he spoke of was exactly this person before her. She wasn't going to argue that he wasn't a great guy, but she also wasn't going to argue that he was prime boyfriend material either. In a good moment, he was a truly amazing and wonderful person, and in a bad moment, the cabin with all the cats seemed better.

"I'm going to go. Put a shirt on. Drink some coffee. Think about my life. I feel like this conversation has included some missteps."

Wendy said, "That is probably true, Laxus."

He knew he'd gotten on her last nerve and she was just too gentle to come down on him for it.

"Sorry, Wendy. I need to think more before I speak. You tried to do something nice for me and I was an asshole."

Wendy was confused about what he thought she'd done for him, but realized he was talking about when she hugged him. It really didn't surprise her. She'd seen him cover up his feelings by antagonizing everyone around him before. In that sense, he wasn't being simple-minded at all and was using the frustration he caused to hide his vulnerability.

"It's all right. We're fine, right?"

He nodded. "You're really good to me. I appreciate it."

"We're friends. We look out for each other. Always."

**_-Reviews Welcome—_**

Super special thanks to Lustwell for reviewing, I'm having so much fun with this story.


	7. Sparkled

Laxus heard from Wendy a couple of weeks later that there was a secret board with an extensive list of information about Gajeel's death, and he told his grandfather, and this led to an early-afternoon trip into the woods to an old house that had seen some recent improvements.

A sign in front had been edited crudely:

'Natsu and Happy,' had two edits burned in the wood under it, '+Lucy, +Layla.'

"That's cute," Makarov said as they approached.

"They should just get a new sign."

His grandfather answered, "Why are you such a boring person?"

Laxus felt his backpack wiggle, and when Caela climbed out of it onto his shoulder, he didn't stop her since they were far enough away from the city.

They knocked, and the door was opened by a tiny pink-haired girl.

"Hi."

"Are your mom and dad home?"

"Mommy is cooking. Daddy is busy." She lowered her voice and added, "He's pooping."

Lucy squawked and ran to the door, reminding her daughter both not to answer the door and that it wasn't nice to 'talk about pooping.' The fact the three-year-old said that part more quietly seemed to suggest Layla knew not to do it and did it anyway, out of either rebellion or pure anarchy.

Lucy said, "She's going through an unfiltered phase right now."

Laxus had a huge ball of fur on one shoulder, and she was going to ask, when Natsu came zipped by, grabbed his kid and wife and jumped back.

"There's a dragon!"

Laxus pointed to his shoulder.

Natsu tried to recover from the intense fear that suddenly sensing a dragon right outside his house where his wife and kid were caused him, and asked, "That…is a dragon?"

"She is six weeks old today. Her name is Caela," Makarov said.

"Is she dangerous?"

"Not even slightly," the old man answered.

The fire dragonslayer was surprised to learn that Laxus brought a dragon home and had been keeping it in his house since he returned. Even more surprising, no one told him about it although this seemed to be accidental.

"Can she talk?"

Laxus said, "She's learned some words."

Layla pointed. "It's a kitty, Daddy. A cloud kitty!"

Makarov impatiently said, "Let the babies play already! I need this cuteness in my life!"

Natsu frowned but very slowly lowered his daughter back to the floor as Laxus put the little dragon at his feet.

It was Caela's first time to meet a human child and Layla's first time to meet a dragon, so they approached cautiously until Layla threw her arms around the dragon and squeezed her quite tight.

"My name is Layla, and you're my friend now."

The little dragon said, "Caela."

It was the first time Laxus had heard her speak her own name before, and despite saying it correctly, it was possibly willfully mispronounced when the toddler repeated it..

"KYAAAAAla! Let's go!" she called, literally screaming the first syllable.

Unclear was where they were going or why, but being not that far from one another developmentally, Caela was more than okay with chasing the little human through the Dragneel house and then outside. It took about sixty seconds for the Dreyars to realize Layla Dragneel was a high-speed, high-noise agent of chaos with an unnatural amount of energy in her.

Lucy said, "You didn't come here for a play date, right? Wendy said she wanted to tell you about our board, and I said it was okay."

Makarov nodded. "I'd like to see what you've put together. There is a great deal that doesn't make sense."

She nodded and led them down the hall, assigning her husband to the duty of watching the 'the babies,' as Makarov called them.

The door to their basement was locked, and after she unlocked it and flipped on the lights, she led them down to a huge bulletin board with strings, pins, and notes all over it.

The blonde said, "For Levy's sake…maybe for everyone, we made this here. We don't want reminders to be everywhere. We want to remember Gajeel's life, and not just his death. But justice is important, and even if we try not to think about it, there's someone out there who killed one of us."

Lucy pointed to the board. "What happened at Sabretooth is linked to what happened to Gajeel. It's just ridiculous to think the events randomly happened on the same day. Yukino's body was found early in the morning on December 22, two years ago. That was only a few hours after winter solstice, which affects a lot of different types of magic, but that part could be a coincidence."

Makarov asked, "You have her spirits now, do they have any information?"

"Yukino didn't have her keys with her. Her spirits, two of which are strong enough to open their own gates like Loke, couldn't. Her keys were in some sort of state where they weren't able to pass through and aren't aware of what happened. Even if my spirits aren't in this world, they always know what's going on with me. There's a strong telepathic link, and according to Libra, something happened to cut that link.

"Yukino died, in an alley five blocks from Sabretooth. It's not like she was out in the wild like Gajeel. There were no signs of a fight, nothing. She was walking to a grocery store.

"Earlier that day, Rogue got into some fight outside the city. His blood was everywhere…and a lot of it, but only his and other scents had dissipated by the time Sting found either because it rained all day.

"What doesn't make sense about Yukino being gone is that before she died, her summoning magic was blocked by some unknown means, but there's no sign she really responded to it. If I suddenly felt my keys disconnect from me, or dropped them, I'd freak out immediately. And then, whoever killed her, did it one blow, right across the throat, with some sort of weapon that the authorities didn't recognize. It wasn't a knife."

Laxus thought for a minute and said, "How did you get her keys? I don't really know shit about your magic, but I know those gold keys are worth a fortune. Someone would just have to either not care at all about money to leave them behind."

Makarov shook his head. "Or they didn't want to get caught with them. Whoever turned up with her keys would be in a world of trouble."

Lucy said, "So late afternoon that same day, Gajeel has just finished a job in Clover. We don't think it's relevant or related—all he had to do was some metalwork to repair a city building Natsu burned down a while back. Axel was a newborn and it was his first job. He left Lily at home with Levy. It was a simple enough job. There and back. On the train ride home, while the train was on the bridge over Clover Canyon, the bridge collapsed. Not clear on how, we just know some blunt force broke the supports holding it up.

"The train falls, Gajeel manages to jump out a window and uses iron rods to suspend it from the side of the canyon instead of letting it crash to the bottom of the canyon, which definitely would have killed everyone. There were forty people on the train, so, he saved their lives. He makes an iron ladder they use to get down, and then wanders away from the group. His body was a mile from there."

Makarov asked, "How did he die?"

Lucy hesitated for a second then, and said, "There was some kind of wound to his spine. He was probably paralyzed by it. There are no signs he got into a fight or used any defensive magic. But he definitely lived for a little while between when he was paralyzed and when he actually died. His body was missing its heart."

Laxus said, "Shit. That's creepy. I don't know the other wizard, but that's not something Gajeel would allow an enemy to do. The idea of him getting stabbed is insane from the beginning. His skin wasn't like even mine or Natsu's even without the metal scales. Besides, he wasn't an idiot. He wouldn't turn his back on an enemy. This whole thing is bullshit."

The blonde nodded. "If you think about it like that, knowing Gajeel, it doesn't make sense. Here's what really doesn't work…if you were going to kill a dragonslayer, you'd have to know enough about them to get it done. Whoever killed Gajeel must have known every dragonslayers greatest weakness. So, why not attack him on the train?"

Makarov nodded. "You think Gajeel was killed by another dragonslayer."

"And that Yukino was killed by someone she knows. Someone walked up to her and slit her throat while standing in front of her," Lucy answered.

She took a step back from the board. "That's basically what we know."

Laxus said, "What's the working theory here?"

Natsu came down the stairs and said, "Rogue did all the killing. Sting doesn't want to hear it. I have no idea where he is now. No one has seen him in all this time, but there was never a body. Gajeel and Yukino wouldn't be on their guard around him. Yukino's keys might have been in his shadow right before she died."

Evil future Rogue was certainly proof Rogue was not without the ability to go all the way wrong if the situation was right. Killing Yukino seemed pointless, but pointless killing was reportedly a hallmark trait of the Rogue that almost was.

It was a very neat theory that tied everything together. That didn't make the theory correct, but it seemed more plausible than the idea Gajeel let a stranger stab him in the back.

Lucy said, "We didn't tell a lot of people about this. We were afraid it would cause fighting between the allied guilds. Sabretooth has mourned Rogue and Yukino. Sting basically lost it and had a really serious fight with Natsu over the idea. Gildarts and Wendy know. Natsu and I made a secret agreement with Jura to share information about Rogue. There hasn't been any. We also told Erza and Jellal, since they have a dragonslayer in their guild."

They stayed in the basement and went over some of the individual clues in greater detail for a while.

For Makarov, there was no understating the impact of Gajeel's death on Natsu. Growing up, Natsu's anger was like his fire—extremely hot and temporary. This was something else. Natsu had evidently been angry for a long time and kept this burden of justice close to him. Their lives all went on without Gajeel, but this they kept, locked up and secret from everyone else.

When they'd exhausted their questions, they headed back upstairs and locked the basement door again. It seemed odd to Laxus that something so dark existed under their house where their little child was, but he couldn't think of a place the board really belonged. It was basically a map of infinite confusion that struggled to explain why people were brutally murdered for no reason.

"It is really quiet up here…kind of suspiciously so," Lucy said.

Natsu called for his daughter, who came down the hall ahead of Caela, who was streaked in bright, colorful marker ink and covered in glitter. Layla had also drawn all over herself in marker and doused herself in craft glitter.

Laxus sight. "What in the…"

Caela was walking in a silly and proud sort of way, like she was genuinely happy to be a rainbow-streaked, sparkly mess.

Lucy stared daggers into her husband. "Natsu…what did I say?"

"I took the markers away. They're locked in the hall closet!"

Layla spun around and sang, "We're sparkly! Sparkly! Sparkly! The sparkle best friends!"

For good measure, and to emphasize her love of glitter, she reached into her pockets and threw two fistfuls of it into the air, but mostly at her parents.

Laxus was annoyed because he was envisioning having to give the little dragon a bath with her dislike of water, and Makarov was annoyed because he knew glitter was a curse—once it entered a house it could never be fully removed.

Lucy lowered her voice. "Layla, how did you get Mama's craft supplies?"

"KYAAALA! She went woosh! Cause she's a magical rainbow cloud! She gots it all from the closet."

Laxus wasn't sure whether to be horrified or deeply impressed that in the time they were downstairs, his baby dragon made friends with the human girl, established some form of communication with her, and then used her phase shift to obtain items Layla wanted so they could make this huge mess. It was an admirable accomplishment with terrifying results.

Lucy glared at them, and even Makarov flinched.

Natsu, who was covered in glitter asked, "Is the playdate over? It feels over to me."

When Laxus reached down to pick up the dragon, she backed away.

"It's time for us to go," he said.

Layla threw her body down on the ground. "KYAAAALA! Don't go!"

"Layla!" the dragon yelled back.

"You can't take her from me, she's my friend!" Layla screamed.

Laxus took the dragon even though she obviously wanted to keep playing with the human girl. It was the first time he was aware she was genuinely angry at him, and the Dragneel girl threw a full-on tantrum.

Makarov said, "Maybe a play date would make them happy."

"Next one is at _your_ house," Lucy answered.

To Layla's credit, she'd tired the dragon out sufficiently so that as soon as they were gone, Caela just fell asleep in his bag. She spent the rest of the afternoon taking a nap in the living room, which gave Laxus time to pack for the job he was going on with the Thunder Legion.

It was his first job back, and he was anxious to get out and do wizarding work again.

A part of him was a little worried about how Caela was going to do without him, but he assumed she'd probably be fine. Besides, it was clear his grandfather intended to remedy her time with playdates so she could run wild with the Dragneel girl, who was arguably a bad influence.

He was happy she made a friend. As easy as it was to think of something that didn't look human as an animal or pet of some sort, dragons were more intelligent and powerful than humans were. It took humans a year to speak their first words, but she was quickly adding them to her vocabulary. She had hopes, dreams, feelings, and all sorts of things that went on with her, like her desire to stand up for herself against the neighborhood cat, or the dog that kept barking at her, or the ducks.

There was a growing fear he had that she'd think of him as her father. Take care of a little dragon? That was a lot. Being a dad? That seemed like a different issue. At the same time, he was starting to feel like life was going to force him into a position where he had to acknowledge her as his child who he cared about or severely damage her psyche, the same way his own father had done.

They were hurtling toward this point, and he wasn't sure how he could possibly not end up having to make that choice outside of distancing himself, which would have been just as hurtful. She was a baby, and a parent to a baby was whoever took care of them.

Around the time he finished packing, he heard the door downstairs and knew it was probably Wendy, there for her daily visit with the dragon.

He headed down and heard her burst out laughing.

"Caela, what happened to you? You're so colorful and sparkly!"

Makarov said, "She made friends with Layla. They made a bit of a mess."

"Layla!" Caela exclaimed, hearing her new favorite word.

Laxus said, "Do you and Layla need to scream each other's names? It seems just really unnecessary."

When he turned the corner, he froze mid-step for a second.

Wendy was all dressed up, her long pink hair curled, smoky eyes, pink lips, and gold high heeled sandals with little crystals around her ankles. Even though she was wearing a coat, it was short, and he couldn't see anything else, meaning whatever was under the coat was probably a very short dress.

She looked so damn pretty he almost didn't know what to do.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Out."

"What do you mean, 'out?'"

Makarov cringed. "Why are you this awful at talking? Tell her she's beautiful and leave her alone. She can go where she wants because she's young, attractive, and single."

Laxus really didn't want to make an ass out of himself, which he seemed to be really good at doing. He seriously believed that if Wendy wasn't such a kind and patient person, she'd hate him. Some part of him wanted to know what she had on under the coat, and where she was going, and what she was going to do when she got there, and if she was going with someone else.

As his grandfather pointed out, he wasn't really allowed to be nosy about her business.

Caela laid there and tiredly ate bites of dried pineapple from Wendy's hand, transferring glitter to her coat and legs.

Makarov usually found an excuse to leave them alone, but this time he did not, a sign he knew Laxus was thinking of misbehaving.

"Sorry about the glitter," Laxus said.

Makarov nodded. "I'll be dead before we find it all."

Wendy smiled. "I kind of like it. It's almost magical, the way something so common can reflect so much color and light. In a world that's so ordinary, it always shines. Besides, sometimes a girl likes to sparkle. Caela knows it too."

Laxus decided to change the subject because really, not looking at those bare legs with her heels was a chore when the glitter was pulling his gaze downward.

When she left, he sulked a little and then saw a single gold sequin left behind on the sofa where she'd been sitting. This meant that under that coat, Wendy was wearing something covered in sequins and probably far glitterier than the little dragon.

He stared at it for a while, pondered his options, and then went upstairs, where he found some dress pants and a nice shirt, even a tie. He wiped a smudge off his designated funeral shoes, stuffed a wad of cash in his pocket, and put a little product in his hair.

Just as he headed down, his grandfather was getting a pouring some whiskey in the living room.

"You should stay home and drink with me."

"Why?"

"Because stalking is an unattractive quality. I'm not even sure how you're still on her good side. At this point, you're floating on her immeasurable natural grace and kindness. If you like her, do something about it," he said.

Laxus waved off his concerns and left, following her scent through the city.

It led to an event hall downtown, on the bottom floor of Magnolia's only nice hotel. There was a banner out front saying it was a benefit for Fiore's orphans, so he didn't feel too bad when they asked for ten thousand jewel to buy a ticket in.

Laxus recognized a number of the people there as some of the wealthiest residents in the area of maybe five or six cities. There were also tons of wizards from all over the place.

The person who took to the mic was Ichiya, the leader of this charitable organization that had evidently come into being during the time he was out of the country.

It was a competition between local guilds, except instead of having them fight, they did ballroom dance.

The idea was incredibly stupid to Laxus, but people who weren't wizards were incredibly preoccupied with the world of magic. This event brought out people with tons of money who would gladly give it to see this trainwreck of an idea playing out. This seemed like something very Ichiya in nature—silly-sounding yet incredibly effective.

Laxus ordered a drink and took a seat at a small table upstairs where he could look down at the chaos as it unfolded. At this, an apparent-region level stage of the seasonal charity competition, people from local guilds had been woefully mismatched with people from other guilds based on scores. This meant watching Hibiki and Minerva attempt to dance when it was clear Minerva wanted to drag him through every ditch in Fiore.

He picked up a familiar scent and turned to find a certain scarlet-haired wizard approaching him.

"Long time no see," Erza said.

"I was surprised to hear you jumped ship," he said.

She sat at his table and said, "I was surprised to hear you came back. You're well?"

"Fine. The old geezer too. You should drop by and visit him. You got kids or whatever? I feel like everyone has been doing that lately," he said.

"Not yet. I think there are some merits to just not doing that immediately because it's possible."

His drink arrived, and he took a sip of the martini. "A source told me something bad is going to happen in this country in the spring."

"Who?"

"The ghost of an old dragon. I don't know much other than that, but Jellal runs in different circles. You guys hear anything?" Laxus asked.

She shook her head. "It's been calm. I'm sure you've already heard about the only real disturbance in the magic world."

"Gajeel. It doesn't make any fucking sense."

Erza said, "Jellal and I are aware of Fairy Tail's suspicions that Rogue killed him."

"Do you agree?"

"No. Rogue fought with someone that day, and it seems like everything that came after that was a result of whatever that was. Sting has a big problem with Natsu for even thinking that. I think he would have been more adversarial to Fairy Tail if he didn't have a certain calm voice to talk him out of all that anger," she replied.

Laxus' face crinkled in distaste. "I'm still going to bust his ass for that Wendy business."

"Why?"

"Have we been apart so long that you think I need a good reason to crater somebody who gets on my nerves?" he asked.

She reached over and at the olive from his drink, then stabbed the metal pick into the table between his fingers. "Laxus."

"What?"

"Set a better example. The guild is counting on you," she answered.

He smirked. "That a threat?"

"I've grown quite strong. All this time you've been gone, we've all been getting stronger," she answered.

"I've been training with the old man. I'd destroy you," he taunted.

Erza said, "I'm a proper adult, so your childishness doesn't bother me. It's honestly just sad at this point."

Laxus' smirk widened to the point she could see his fangs. "I heard Gray put you down during the Grand Magic Games. It might be time for you to take a step back and enjoy that plateau you've hit. I mean, let's be honest, you took the 'my magic is changing clothes' thing about as far as you could."

"Silence, Laxus. Stop taunting me or I'm going to give you what you seem to be asking for."

He laughed. "I thought my childishness wasn't going to bother you."

She glared, and he laughed a little more until she shook her head. "You've grown up a lot. I can see it in your eyes even if the same tired garbage is still coming out when you open your mouth."

Laxus looked down at the dancefloor. "Do you and Jellal Number 3 take part in this nonsense?"

"What do you mean, Jellal Number 3?"

"There are so many, I have to give them numbers."

Erza's scowl deepened. "We do. We've already been eliminated. Considering this operation is basically the brain child of Blue Pegasus and the Thunder Legion, I'd think you'd be on board with it."

"My team did this? How unnerving."

"Mostly Evergreen. It's one of the most successful charities in the country, you know. This money builds orphanages."

Laxus said, "I mean, of course my team did it. I'm a little surprised I wasn't invited or…even told about this. I see all of them all the time. It just seems odd that I was left out."

"Maybe they didn't trust you to behave. Natsu was officially disinvited from these things, you know."

It wasn't hard to imagine that happening at all. Literally anyone who had ever known Natsu could guess why that might be a problem.

He mainly assumed the omission had come via Wendy, as he talked to her more than the others and she had become the de facto leader of the Thunder Legion in his absence.

"Is Wendy competing in this thing?"

"Wendy is was part of the team that won the whole competition last year."

"Wendy? Wendy Marvell, the one from Fairy Tail. Is a champion wizard ballroom dancer or whatever."

Erza said, "People learn to do things besides drink and fight."

When Hibiki and Minerva finished with Hibiki dropping Minerva on her face, Erza said, "I'm deeply concerned for his safety."

"No chance she doesn't punch him out," Laxus answered.

"He has it coming. How clumsy."

"Let's be fair. Minerva is probably one of those women who looks light but actually weighs a ton. That's just a lot more woman than you'd think Hibiki knows what to do with."

Erza nodded. "From my battle with her, I think that's true. She's…dense. I'd bet she weighs more than Natsu. Definitely more than Hibiki. But why are we having this awful conversation?"

"I don't know. You wanted to talk about how fat Minerva is, right? How catty of you."

Erza gave him a very hard pat on one shoulder. "It's been nice catching up. I'll see you around."

Laxus said, "You can always come back if things don't work out with Jellal Number 3. Probably plenty more where he came from."

All in all, the event was actually incredibly entertaining mayhem.

The night dragged on, with speeches about building orphanages and good work for good causes, bad jokes, and baskets filled with money floating around the room.

He was minding his own business when another person approached his table, and sat down without asking.

"Wild…eh?"

It was Bacchus Groh, one of the few wizards Laxus genuinely despised. Early on in his wizarding career, they'd almost been rivals. There was a long list of grievances between them, and while Laxus had long surpassed him in strength, he had not outgrown his contempt.

Laxus, now on his fourth martini, said, "Do you want something?"

"Surprised to see your face. Didn't think we'd meet again."

"Likewise. Did you miss your appointment with cirrhosis to annoy me?"

Bacchus, who was wearing a tux, smirked. "Why the bad attitude?"

"The last thing I remember about you is when you told Elfman if he beat you in the Grand Magic Games, you wanted to fuck both his sisters."

"Lighten up. It was obviously a joke. That demon girl would have peeled my skin off and made a man-suit out of it, yes?"

Laxus said, "Best case scenario. Why are you even talking to me?"

Bacchus answered, "I noticed something about my partner when we were practicing. She's so defensive of you. I guess she's got a little crush on you or something. I was telling her about the good old days and she made me promise not to say anything bad about you. How sweet is that?"

There was a cracking sound and when Laxus put his glass down, Bacchus could see Laxus had actually taken a bite right out of it and spat the bite-shaped chunk of glass back into his drink.

"Wendy?"

"We won the whole thing last year. You know, for the kids. It's just all I can do for those poor helpless babies. Looks like we're on track to win again. I feel lucky. She's real good at moving that body. Gives a man a lot to think about."

At this point, Laxus assumed not inviting him had actually been a deliberate effort probably spearheaded by Freed, who knew his exact thoughts on Bacchus.

Bacchus handed him a clipboard and said, "You should join our sponsor list. For the kids. You basically pledge what you'll give if we win tonight. I wrote your name down already. Should I just write a zero down because you're probably a broke joke? Wendy will see that you hate kids."

"Wendy already knows I hate kids, so it wouldn't surprise her."

He pointed to his own name. "But look at all the hard-earned money I'm giving."

Laxus snatched the pen and scribbled a number down that was more than he planned on spending for the next month. "I'm going to kick your ass so hard, you know that, right?"

"I'd love to stay and chat, but I have to go. Can't be late."

When he first saw Wendy, he felt a little dizzy at the sight of her in the strapless, tight gold sequin dress with its little tasseled bottom that was hardly much of a skirt at all. Of course she knew he was there; their connection meant she'd known he'd been there all along. She hadn't come to talk to him, which was probably a sign she wasn't happy.

She was really good at dancing.

Like _really_ good.

Bacchus was too, which Laxus was never, ever going to acknowledge to anyone. He handled her like he was familiar doing so, and it made his blood boil, and at one point he dipped her low and she wrapped one of her legs around him. Bacchus made sure to look up at him, just to piss of the lightning wizard a little more. Both Laxus and Bacchus knew Bacchus was going to pay for what he was doing in blood, but it was still so much fun he wasn't willing to stop.

It was just incredibly uncomfortable for Laxus to watch even though everyone else enjoyed it. Wendy and Bacchus were better than everyone else was and if the numbers on the clipboard were any indicator, they were good at raising money.

Watching Bacchus throw Wendy's body around like he owned it was irritating to him on a fairly deep level, no matter how irrational it was.

Once they were done, and had received their winning score, Wendy headed up to where he was. Their dance was the last event of the night, so the event started to wind down and people started to file out as she joined him.

"Were you all just not going to tell me?" he asked.

Wendy sat down in the chair previously occupied by both Bacchus and Erza and looked down at his glass. "It seemed like the right thing to do for everyone. How did you find out?"

"I followed you."

She gave him a rather bewildered stare. "I don't mean any offense when I say this, but I just need you to understand that you're acting like a child who doesn't want to play with a toy but can't stand the idea of anyone else having touching it. I'm not a toy. I'm your friend."

Laxus asked, "Sorry. I just have a lot of feelings that don't make sense to me. You left a sequin at my house and I decided I wanted to see what you were wearing. I don't know why you're so fucking cute or how you got that way. You have all these assholes in orbit around you, and I just…I don't like it. I know it's irrational, but it's how I feel."

He considered it great fortune that she was the kindest, most patient, and most understanding person that he knew. That also probably explained why she got so much attention as others tried to make that their own fortune.

They were interrupted by Ichiya, who approached their table. "Miss Wendy, when you have a moment, Hibiki requires the attention of a skilled healer."

Wendy nodded. "I'm coming."

She walked off and he wasn't sure if she was going to come back. The event was over, she was obviously unhappy with him, and she probably had other things to do.

He wondered if she was frustrated because he felt like he was treating her like a toy, or if it was because she wanted him to play with her rather than just being mad about others wanting to do so.

Probably the former.

Definitely the former.

He filled out a bank charge authorization with the charity workers so they could hit his bank account for the money he'd promised and started to walk home, hands in his pockets.

Wendy's entire life had essentially been one long series of disappointments: losing her human parents, getting dumped alone in the future, wandering with Jellal 1, aka Mystogan, who eventually left her at a village of people she thought of as her friends but turned out to be imaginary. From there, she found out her dragon mother had been inside of her all along, but was also dead. Her best human friend more or less loss the ability to use magic to save her, her Exceed died, and arriving successfully somehow at adulthood, she was entrapped by a magical accident that made it impossible to love anyone except one single person even though lots of men could see how incredible she was.

Assholes, bastards, and unworthy, the lot of them. At least, to Laxus.

He heard a strange rhythm and felt her approach, running in her heels.

When she was just a few feet from him, she tripped on the uneven cobblestone path and went flying forward.

Laxus caught her and set her up right. "Who catches you when you trip when I'm not around?"

"The ground. I'm better than I used to be."

"You forget your coat?"

Wendy looked down and nodded. "I was in a hurry to catch you."

"I'm going to need an explanation about how Thunder Legion and Ichiya figured out how to rob rich people with such a weird and stupid idea," he answered.

Wendy walked alongside him and said, "It started with Evergreen. She wanted to learn how to dance, so she signed her and Elfman up for lessons, but she fired him as her partner."

"Why?"

"Because he is Elfman. So, I thought it would be fun and we went together. It was our girls night out and we had so much fun, but we tended to get a lot of attention, and Bixlow said people would probably pay to watch wizards trying to dance. Then Freed said it might be a good way to raise money for the less fortunate. Then we brought in Ichiya because he's just so good at making things happen. We've raised a lot of money. There are kids who have a safe place to sleep tonight because we're willing to maybe look a little silly sometimes."

The idea of Elfman trying to do anything requiring a high degree of physical grace and precision was ridiculous. Evergreen firing him and partying with another girl was purely an Evergreen thing, and Laxus could only imagine that would get some attention.

On second thought, the insanity was pure Thunder Legion—weird and fun and incredibly elite in its own way.

Wendy said, "It's actually really hard work and it takes a lot of practice."

"Whose idea was it not to tell me?"

"Your grandfather's. I knew you had bad blood with Bacchus, but Master thought you'd probably misbehave and ruin everything," she answered.

"He knew?"

"He's one of my sponsors."

Laxus said, "So I need to learn to dance?"

"You seem like you might have the same problem as Elfman. It's okay if you don't."

He smirked. "That may be the rudest thing any human being has ever said to me. You basically just looked me in my face and told me you think I'm a clumsy dumbass."

He grabbed her by the hand and twirled her like he'd seen the dancers do. "See? I'm a fast learner."

"I'm fast too," she said, smiling at him.

For a second, he wasn't sure what she was talking about, but it only took that first second for him to notice the affects of what she'd done. When he spun her, she slipped the charm off his finger.

"What are you doing?"

Wendy threw it in the river they'd been walking along and said, "Something about winning makes me feel really confident and brave. I feel invincible. Don't you ever feel brave?"

Laxus looked her over and felt his heart start to beat a little faster. "Is that what you want? For me to want you?"

"I can feel how you feel. It pulls at me. We're adults. Can't we just be honest about where we are? I actually really like you as a person, but you're really frustrating me. I want to feel a certain kind of way, and you're the only person who can ever give me that. And you just…won't. And I don't understand because I think you want to."

He put a hand on her face, leaned down, and kissed her.

It seemed like the right thing to do and wasn't nearly as awkward as he expected it to be.

Her lips were soft, and a little sticky from lip gloss. Her breath smelled a bit like she'd had a drink too, and she seemed to melt when their lips touched.

What he was not expecting was that this single act was akin to opening pandora's box, because what he'd had trapped in there was apparently the side of him that wanted to cut off Sting's hands and burn Bacchus to ash. It was primal, powerful, and left him feeling like electricity was flowing through his body in some other way than it normally did.

Wendy sort of collapsed at the knees, so he had to hold her up.

It scared him, because feelings, but it emboldened her, because feelings.

Yet it felt so good he couldn't bring himself to fight it.

His fingers slid through her silky hair as she embraced him after the kiss.

"Wow," she whispered. "Can we talk?"

He nodded. "Let's head back to our place. The old geezer and the Caela are probably asleep."

Wendy hugged on his arm while they walked, seemingly gleefully happy. He really felt the same way but had no idea how to express it. In some ways, his spirit felt lighter, and in other ways, he felt a heavy urge to do all sorts of things. He knew she felt the same way, because he was picking up a weirdly tingly heat from her that he hadn't felt before.

Once they got home, he asked, "You want coffee?"

"It's after midnight."

Laxus said, "Whiskey?"

"I'm a girl."

They sat together in the living room, in silence at first.

Laxus said, "Going slow seems like a good idea."

"Is that really what you want?"

"I mean, right now I'm so horny I can barely think, but that's your fault. Trying to be a mature adult."

Wendy crossed her legs and sulked a little, and he could tell she wasn't happy.

"Are you mad? You're the one who took the stupid ring off."

"Why is this the only time you want to be a mature adult? Would it really be bad if we just got a little swept away?" she asked.

Laxus swallowed nervously. "This seems reckless. I'm a reckless person, and this seems like the danger zone."

"You're actually overly-careful when it comes to your feelings and relationships. Just reckless with the stuff that doesn't matter. I'm the opposite. I've shared my feelings with so many people that I'll never see again because they're gone. But I'm not sorry I loved any of them. I won't be sorry I loved you, unless you decide you can't love me back."

Wendy felt like if they could just clear this hurdle, things would work out. She and Laxus already had a sense of intimacy most humans didn't even have an understanding of, so it wasn't like they had secret feelings. She had so much faith in Laxus both as a friend and as a man, and knew he was acting out because he couldn't express himself toward her correctly.

While she didn't know from personal experience, sexual intimacy was obviously a powerful driving force in human relationships. It was probably the only way to break through the endless walls Laxus build around himself and get to his actual heart.

Besides, she really did feel some intense urges toward him. The kiss had been enough to leave her wanting more…wanting everything. All at once. If the situation were any different, she might resist, but since she and Laxus were trapped and there was never going to be someone else she should have saved herself for, it was easier to justify not hitting the brakes.

Laxus pondered on whether or not it was a good idea to go along with Wendy and decided that while he felt a little uneasy, he did want to. He could tell she wanted to have some passionate experience with him and he didn't want to deny her after he wasted so much of her emotional bandwidth and patience. It was something he wanted too. Desperately wanted it, even.

Laxus nodded and leaned down to kiss her again and was somehow astounded that his body seemed to be pre-programmed with instructions about what to do. He'd always assumed that the actual touching would be awkward and would require a great deal of planning and concentration, but now that it was actually happening, he was on autopilot and only had to enjoy to burn as their hands and lips worked.

When he stood up, she jumped and put her legs around him, and they bounced off the walls on the way to the stairs.

It was an accident, but he tore her dress while trying to force it to show him more of her, and then once it was ruined he just decided to ruin it all the way and ripped it with his hands, sending the sequins all over the kitchen.

He carried her upstairs and was relieved to find no dragon in his room, a sign she was probably crashing with his grandfather.

Clothes and shoes went flying everywhere, and they moved together as their dragon magics seemed to flow together. It was similar to what they'd experienced while mixing blood but amplified greatly by the fact that they were physically entangled at the same time.

Once it was over, he fell asleep almost instantly, leaving Wendy to stare down at him in shock.

She sighed and pulled the sheet up to cover him.

Laxus seemed to be sleeping so peacefully, and there was a certain innocent boyish charm about him like this.

He was sleeping with his hand on her bare hip, a strange sight for someone who knew him to be generally averse to any kind of physical contact. Once he'd had it, it was like he couldn't get enough and she would have sworn with all the touching she'd felt that he was somehow an octopus and had grown tons of extra hands just to put them all over her.

Then he started snoring and the cuteness of his sleep diminished quickly.

It was dragonslayer snoring too, quite loud and gross, and accentuated by a distinct growl.

"Well, that got old fast…"

He was dead to her in a deep sleep, and she wanted to stay up all night and talk, or maybe make love again.

Even calling his name didn't work.

When she tried to get out of the bed, his grip on her tightened and he pulled her against him.

Wendy sighed and pushed him off, and he opened his eyes.

"Why are you beating me up? Was I bad or something?" he grumbled in a half-asleep daze.

"No, you were fine. It was good. It was really good. I mean, I don't have anything to compare it to, but I liked it a lot. You rolled off of me and lost consciousness immediately."

He sat up and looked around. "I don't remember that."

"I thought we would talk afterward."

"We didn't? It seems rude that I'd just go to sleep. Are you sure we didn't?"

Wendy rolled onto her side facing him and said, "We did not talk. You climaxed and fell asleep."

Laxus reached out for her and pulled her close. "So what did you want to talk about?"

"Us?"

His hand moved from her hip to her derriere. "Actions speak louder than words."

They had another round, this one slower and sweeter, and while she appreciated Laxus in a mood that was more sweet than desperately hungry…

One minute after, he was snoring again.

For a while, she sat there and wondered if this was an actual health problem, although she hadn't read about any kind of sex-induced sleep disorder all her years of studying medicine as a healer. More likely than not, this was just a Laxus problem.

Wendy still felt wired and incredibly energized, happy about this new development in her life but unable to discuss it with Laxus because he seemed to be physically incapable of remaining conscious after sex and could only wake up to have more sex, and then fall asleep again.

Since she was too excited to sleep, her mind ran in circles continuously while Laxus snored like some sort of monster. Her imagination ran wild with all the potential their relationship now had, and after thinking out a thousand different things, she managed to settle down and fall asleep.

XXX

Makarov came downstairs the next morning holding a groggy looking baby dragon in his arms, and found his grandson making breakfast.

"How did your stalking adventure go last night? Probably not well."

Laxus glared at him. "Did you not hear anything last night?"

"I was drunk. I put the hatchling under a sleep spell. She threw a fit without you. Did something happen?"

There was a squeak on the stairs and Wendy came down, wearing one of Laxus' shirts and a pair of track pants she'd rolled up as she carried her heels in one hand. At the sight of Makarov, she became instantly embarrassed, as she knew he usually woke up much later and wasn't expecting him to see her slipping out of the house.

Makarov looked at her, and at the remains of the gold sequin dress hanging over one of the chairs at their table. Then back at his grandson, then at Wendy.

Wendy tried to find some excuse she could tell him, but there was no explaining away her dress getting ripped up and her being at their house all night.

She nervously laughed. "Master, please don't say whatever you are about to say."

"But-"

"Leave her alone, geezer," Laxus warned.

Laxus pointed to his pan of eggs. "You want breakfast?"

"I want…to escape?" Wendy anxiously answered.

"We'll meet at the train later for work?"

She nodded.

Laxus put the pan down, walked across the kitchen, and kissed her on the cheek. "Later then."

She smiled at him and fled as quickly as possible, hoping to avoid being seen wearing Laxus' clothes by anyone else that she knew.

Makarov, hugged the baby dragon and exclaimed, "My grandson finally made it with a woman! I never thought this day would come!"

"Stop that…she understands a lot of what she hears."

Laxus already had a bowl of fruit ready for Caela and when Makarov put her on the floor to eat it, rather than eating like a dog like she had been, she used one of her claws to pick up the food and hold onto it while she ate and eventually sat up on her hindquarters so she could use both of her front claws at once.

Makarov clapped his hands together. "Has your life changed?"

"I have a girl now, so I guess?"

"Were you good to her?"

"Mind your own business."

His grandfather said, "It took you long enough. I was starting to think you were really going to die a virgin. Thank goodness Wendy is such a sweet girl. I don't know how much pity it took, but I know it was a lot."

Laxus made two plates of eggs and got two beers from the fridge. "Anyway, I did have something I need to ask you about."

"I'm listening."

"Is it normal to fall asleep? Like right after its over?"

Makarov stared at his grandson. "You mean in the time when a woman wants to tell you every secret she's ever had?"

"I mean, I don't know what she wanted to do. I was asleep."

"What kind of idiot are you?" he said, slinging a rubbery arm out to smash him right on top of the head. "How am I going to get great-grandchildren from such a useless moron? Intimacy for a man is about the sex. Intimacy for a woman is about the time after when you talk. You can't not attend that part of the ceremony. It's not optional."

His grandfather went on, ranting wildly, "I can't even imagine that poor girl, after trying to help a dumbass like you figure out what goes where, and then you fall asleep on her when she's ready to share her heart. Worst of all, I know how you sleep, like some sort of rabid animal, growling with your mouth open! Not cute! You bring shame to our family name with this stupidity!"

"_This_ is what brings shame to the Dreyar name? It seems odd that this would be the issue. I seem to remember doing some things that were definitely worse than this," he argued.

Makarov rolled his eyes. "I'm tired of you. I'm also retired and bored. Go make some babies so I can have something to do with myself. You're honestly getting a little old to be getting all granddaddy's time and attention."

Laxus went on to a different subject and said, "I've decided I'm going to learn to dance. For the orphans."

His grandfather just laughed at him and answered, "Yeah right. You and Elfman!"

The way his grandfather kept laughing continually, and in spells, seemed to suggest he thought his grandson would be especially terrible at dancing. The mere thought of it left him hysterical with laughter as his grandson quickly ate his beer and eggs, a Dreyar family staple.

Laxus put both of his elbows on the table and gave his grandfather two middle fingers. "Thanks for all your support."

"You're supposed to be in a happy mood."

"That's just for Wendy. She makes me happy. What do you do? You're still the same moldy old sack of piss as always," he answered.

His arm went rubbery again so he could pinch Laxus cheek. "That's my grandson. Found himself a girl, and she is incredible. Sweet, understanding, patient, and gorgeous on top of that. She's out of your league, but you made it happen. I'm so proud!"

Caela went to Makarov's chair. "Gramps!"

"Come here, baby girl."

"She calls you Gramps now?"

Makarov nodded. "We had a good time without you. You left her when it was bedtime and she's still pissed. She's probably going to have a rough time when you're on this job."

Laxus frowned. "Caela, you want to hang out with me for a bit?"

"Layla!"

The old man laughed. "Rejected! She wants to go play with her friend."

"I'm the reason you're here, how are you going to do that?" he asked.

His grandfather only kept laughing. "…said every parent ever, since the beginning of time, when their kids act like little shits."

Laxus put his dishes in the sink and said, "Fine. I'm leaving early if that's how it's going to be. There's something I have to take care of before we go."

He dressed and left with his travel bag, tracking a scent toward the train.

Bacchus had his bags and was less than two blocks from the train station when he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

A lightning bolt hit him so hard he was left stumbling back, and then there were fists. Not fists intent on winning a battle, as Laxus had overcome Bacchus long before. They were fists of punishment. Bacchus was left in a Bacchus-shaped hole in the middle of the street, his fingers twitching from electric shock.

Laxus took a swig from his gourd, stepped on the back of his neck and said, "Now I feel better."

Bacchus picked himself up as the dragonslayer was walking away. "W-Wild…?"

"Fuck off and get out of my town before I use your drunk ass to ring the bell in the Cathedral."

Satisfied that he'd repaid Bacchus for provoking him, he took a deep breath and decided things were finally looking up for him. Being someone who now had sex filled him with a strange sense of optimism and an eagerness to see Wendy again.

When he turned, he found Erza walking up the street with a cart full of luggage.

He knew she could tell what he'd done, and she knew they'd had some fights in younger days. She seemed displeased, and as she passed by, she requipped some horrible armor he'd never seen and punched him in the stomach so hard he crumpled to the ground, almost threw up, and couldn't breathe.

"Just a little reminder from the plateau that you need to grow up," she said.

Knocking the wind out of a dragonslayer was actually quite a feat, so he wasn't even really that pissed that she did it. With the first breath he was able to take, he said, "Impressive."

"Thank you."

"If you want to slap me around, you can just come back to Fairy Tail," he gasped, rubbing his abdomen where he knew he was going to get a massive bruise. "Because fuck…that was painful. Wow."

His bruised ribs protested as he stood, and Erza gave him a slight smile and said, "I'm glad you're back, Laxus."

"You _just_ tried to punch a hole in me with your first."

"How was I going to do that if you never returned?"

Laxus asked, "Fair enough. I have to go. I have a job to do now that I have bruised ribs and lungs and insides."

"Wendy will fix it. She cares about everyone too much to let anyone suffer, even when they deserve it."

When he realized she was leaving town without seeing his grandfather, he said, "But really, the old man isn't mad you left, Erza. He's happy you're happy. Don't be like that. Go talk to him."

"I left Fairy Tail. After you were gone, and master. Gildarts had become the master so except for Mirajane, the whole S-Class roster was gone. I know it hurt the guild. Weakening the guild might have played a role in what happened."

Laxus said, "Is that what this is about? Gajeel didn't die because you left. He died because someone fucking murdered him. End of story. If you'd been sitting in the guild when it happened, he'd still be gone. Everyone feels responsible for what happened."

Erza hesitated and then looked back the way she'd come. "I have missed Master. I guess you're right."

"I have to go find Wendy because I think I have some internal bleeding. See you round. And when you get to my house, stay calm. No swords please—we know a monster lives there. And don't tell anyone."

**-Review Welcome!-**

Thanks to Lustwell for taking time to review! You're awesome, and I'm glad you're enjoying.


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